5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

POMPS

POMPS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 81.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with POMPS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of pomp

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How POMPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POMPS as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 62.3% of games, misses completely in 37.7%, and leaves about 431 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,306 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__P_ P in the 1st position and P in the 4th position _O__S O in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in POMPS.

First-turn measures

All four describe POMPS used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

3.54 Entropy (bits)
431 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 8% of evaluated openers
2.41 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POMPS performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,306 Rank among openers
Opening with POMPS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,306 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
715
4 guesses
1,263
5 guesses
312
6 guesses
25
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
62%
Green tile
23%
All gray
38%

Feedback distribution

POMPS can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

896 answers
326 answers
227 answers
169 answers
102 answers
76 answers
67 answers
59 answers
39 answers
38 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for POMPS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

P3O1M3P3S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Try next

RAILE STALE TRONE TALER CARNE SNORT

Strategy after playing POMPS

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to POMPS.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POMPS:

38% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
14% chance
Suggested:
STALE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

37.7% →
RAILE 6.21 bits
13.7% →
STALE 5.61 bits
9.6% →
TRONE 5.17 bits
7.1% →
TALER 4.48 bits
4.3% →
RAILE 5.32 bits
3.2% →
CARNE 5.28 bits
2.8% →
SNORT 4.43 bits
2.5% →
CARET 4.71 bits
1.6% →
URITE 4.00 bits
1.6% →
TAPIR 4.86 bits

Research on POMPS

Game-tree analysis and word research for POMPS, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with POMPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,161 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,389 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it PAHMPS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, POMPS is a kind of show or elegance.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POMPS sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).