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

PUPPA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 76.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PUPPA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

papa; father

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 PUPPA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PUPPA 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 62.8% of games, misses completely in 37.2%, and leaves about 555 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,722 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

P___A P in the 1st position and A in the 5th position P__P_ P in the 1st position and P in the 4th position _U__A U in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe PUPPA 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)
555 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
76.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 1% of evaluated openers
3.05 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUPPA 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
0.76 Spread of game lengths
#14,722 Rank among openers
Opening with PUPPA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.76 means those games clustered within about 0.76 of a guess of the 4.02 average. It ranks #14,722 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
30
3 guesses
517
4 guesses
1,219
5 guesses
543
6 guesses
41
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:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
20%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

PUPPA can come back 46 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

883 answers
683 answers
185 answers
142 answers
60 answers
57 answers
49 answers
45 answers
44 answers
32 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1P3P3A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Try next

TOILE TARSE STONE SLYER NOIRE SPITE

Strategy after playing PUPPA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUPPA:

37% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
29% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
STONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

37.2% →
TOILE 5.91 bits
28.8% →
TARSE 5.40 bits
7.8% →
STONE 5.32 bits
6.0% →
SLYER 4.33 bits
2.5% →
NOIRE 4.98 bits
2.4% →
SPITE 4.52 bits
2.1% →
MOIRE 4.65 bits
1.9% →
SAULT 4.38 bits
1.9% →
REAST 4.46 bits
1.3% →
CRATE 4.29 bits

Research on PUPPA

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUPPA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.02 guesses and ranks #14,736 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.18 guesses at best and is rank #7,351 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.02, at or below the proven-optimal 4.02, 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 PUHPUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

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