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

PONGS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PONGS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of pong

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of pong

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 PONGS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PONGS 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 73.1% of games, misses completely in 26.9%, and leaves about 248 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,775 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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__G_ P in the 1st position and G 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 PONGS.

First-turn measures

All four describe PONGS 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
248 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 43% of evaluated openers
1.57 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PONGS 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#3,775 Rank among openers
Opening with PONGS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #3,775 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
913
4 guesses
1,226
5 guesses
154
6 guesses
14
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
NOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
25%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

PONGS can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

638 answers
273 answers
160 answers
149 answers
130 answers
85 answers
74 answers
66 answers
62 answers
61 answers
52 answers
51 answers
51 answers
42 answers
35 answers
31 answers
29 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1N1G2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

TIARE STALE TALER ARIEL GLARE CADIE

Strategy after playing PONGS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PONGS:

27% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE
7% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.9% →
TIARE 6.28 bits
11.5% →
STALE 5.72 bits
6.7% →
TALER 5.25 bits
6.3% →
ARIEL 5.49 bits
5.5% →
TALER 4.65 bits
3.6% →
GLARE 5.18 bits
3.1% →
ARIEL 5.22 bits
2.8% →
CADIE 4.60 bits
2.6% →
CARLE 4.90 bits
2.6% →
CARET 4.87 bits

Research on PONGS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PONGS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,099 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,448 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 PAWNGZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PONGS is a kind of stink.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PONGS 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).