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

POPPA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 80.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpɒpə/

Noun

father, papa.

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 POPPA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POPPA 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 68.4% of games, misses completely in 31.6%, and leaves about 454 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,626 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.98 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe POPPA 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.

3.14 Entropy (bits)
454 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
80.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 2% of evaluated openers
2.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POPPA 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.

3.98 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,626 Rank among openers
Opening with POPPA left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.98 average. It ranks #14,626 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
535
4 guesses
1,268
5 guesses
471
6 guesses
44
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
23%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

POPPA can come back 49 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

751 answers
620 answers
241 answers
218 answers
98 answers
54 answers
52 answers
42 answers
42 answers
32 answers
31 answers
25 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1P3P3A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing POPPA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POPPA:

32% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
26% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.6%
SLIER 5.96 bits
26.1%
TARSE 5.44 bits
10.2%
TRONE 5.17 bits
9.2%
CRUET 4.60 bits
4.1%
BARON 4.62 bits
2.3%
SILER 4.81 bits
2.2%
SINCE 4.76 bits
1.8%
MAIRE 4.21 bits
1.8%
REAST 4.54 bits
1.3%
CLARY 3.99 bits

Research on POPPA

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

Optimal play

Opening with POPPA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.99 guesses and ranks #14,661 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.14 guesses at best and is rank #7,288 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.98, at or below the proven-optimal 3.99, 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 PAHPUH.

Rhymes with SCAPA

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POPPA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).