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

POPUP

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

As an opener, it rules out about 74.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of pop-up.

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 POPUP performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POPUP 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 53.8% of games, misses completely in 46.2%, and leaves about 603 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,725 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.02 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe POPUP 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.

2.90 Entropy (bits)
603 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
74.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 1% of evaluated openers
3.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POPUP 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.

4.02 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,725 Rank among openers
Opening with POPUP left 4 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 4.02 average. It ranks #14,725 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
23
3 guesses
520
4 guesses
1,241
5 guesses
515
6 guesses
51
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:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
54%
Green tile
25%
All gray
46%

Feedback distribution

POPUP can come back 43 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1097 answers
305 answers
269 answers
213 answers
78 answers
64 answers
47 answers
38 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
6 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1P3U1P3
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing POPUP

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POPUP:

46% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
13% chance
Suggested:
SANER
11% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

46.2%
TIARE 6.16 bits
12.8%
SANER 5.25 bits
11.3%
SLANE 5.05 bits
9.0%
TALER 4.67 bits
3.3%
IRATE 5.04 bits
2.7%
ARIEL 4.99 bits
2.0%
RANSE 4.56 bits
1.6%
SHART 3.44 bits
1.3%
RAILE 4.75 bits
1.2%
SLART 4.49 bits

Research on POPUP

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

Optimal play

Opening with POPUP, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.00 guesses and ranks #14,696 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.17 guesses at best and is rank #7,340 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.02; proven optimal play reaches 4.00. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 PAHPUHP.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POPUP 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).