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

POTSY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A children's game, similar to hopscotch, especially popular in New York.

Noun

The puck used in this game, usually made of a flattened tin can.

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

Use POTSY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How POTSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POTSY 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 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,029 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 POTSY 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.

4.69 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POTSY 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,029 Rank among openers
Opening with POTSY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,029 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
969
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
172
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
38%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

POTSY can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

550 answers
216 answers
183 answers
150 answers
143 answers
110 answers
81 answers
65 answers
60 answers
53 answers
48 answers
47 answers
45 answers
42 answers
33 answers
33 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1T1S1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing POTSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POTSY:

23% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.1% →
RAILE 6.28 bits
9.1% →
TIARE 5.66 bits
7.7% →
CRANE 5.40 bits
6.3% →
RAILE 5.37 bits
6.0% →
LAIDE 4.82 bits
4.6% →
RANCE 4.79 bits
3.4% →
LIANE 4.49 bits
2.7% →
CHARE 4.79 bits
2.5% →
CLINE 5.07 bits
2.2% →
CARLE 4.58 bits

Research on POTSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with POTSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,247 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with POTSY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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.

Familiarity and learning

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