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

PONGO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PONGO Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A soldier.

Noun

A canyon or gorge in South America, especially one cutting through a ridge or mountain range.

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 PONGO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PONGO 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 60.8% of games, misses completely in 39.2%, and leaves about 425 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,956 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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___O P in the 1st position and O in the 5th position P__G_ P in the 1st position and G in the 4th position _O__O O in the 2nd position and O in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe PONGO 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.

3.73 Entropy (bits)
425 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PONGO 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,956 Rank among openers
Opening with PONGO left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,956 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
754
4 guesses
1,288
5 guesses
247
6 guesses
18
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
2 vowels
Common:
NO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
26%
All gray
39%

Feedback distribution

PONGO can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

931 answers
201 answers
172 answers
140 answers
136 answers
98 answers
79 answers
76 answers
65 answers
53 answers
33 answers
33 answers
26 answers
25 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1N1G2O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

REAST TIARE CRATE TALER STALE GLARE

Strategy after playing PONGO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PONGO:

39% chance
Suggested:
REAST
8% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
7% chance
Suggested:
CRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.2% →
REAST 6.25 bits
8.5% →
TIARE 5.48 bits
7.2% →
CRATE 5.28 bits
5.9% →
TALER 4.71 bits
5.7% →
STALE 5.50 bits
4.1% →
GLARE 5.21 bits
3.3% →
CARLE 5.00 bits
3.2% →
CADIE 4.69 bits
2.7% →
SWARE 4.38 bits
2.2% →
LEAST 4.33 bits

Research on PONGO

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

Optimal play

Opening with PONGO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,651 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,793 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PAWNGGOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PONGO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).