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

SESSA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

A surname.

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 SESSA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SESSA 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 78.5% of games, misses completely in 21.5%, and leaves about 276 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,427 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.95 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 SESSA 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.

3.77 Entropy (bits)
276 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SESSA 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.

3.95 Avg guesses
99.58% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,427 Rank among openers
Opening with SESSA left 10 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.95 average. It ranks #14,427 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
29
3 guesses
560
4 guesses
1,299
5 guesses
422
6 guesses
34
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:
AES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
37%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

SESSA can come back 52 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
390 answers
364 answers
212 answers
140 answers
133 answers
90 answers
80 answers
62 answers
47 answers
41 answers
35 answers
35 answers
27 answers
22 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1S1S1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Strategy after playing SESSA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SESSA:

21% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
16% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
15% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.5%
COUNT 5.70 bits
16.4%
NOIRE 5.14 bits
15.3%
TALON 5.16 bits
8.9%
CARLE 4.72 bits
5.9%
RONTE 4.30 bits
5.6%
SNOUT 4.33 bits
3.8%
TRIPE 4.46 bits
3.4%
CLARY 4.08 bits
2.6%
CLARY 4.33 bits
2.0%
MOIRE 4.18 bits

Research on SESSA

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

Optimal play

Opening with SESSA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.95 guesses and ranks #14,409 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 SESSA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.95, at or below the proven-optimal 3.95, 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 SEHSUH.

Familiarity and learning

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