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

SLOPS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of slop (“rubber thong sandals”)

Noun

plural of slop (“scraps fed to animals; household wastewater”)

“I don't mind slopping the hogs, but I don't like the stench of the slops.”

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of slop

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 SLOPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SLOPS 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 70.8% of games, misses completely in 29.2%, and leaves about 289 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,165 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 SLOPS 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
289 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 27% of evaluated openers
1.86 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLOPS 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,165 Rank among openers
Opening with SLOPS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #9,165 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
804
4 guesses
1,233
5 guesses
248
6 guesses
22
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
32%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

SLOPS can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

694 answers
257 answers
242 answers
155 answers
103 answers
95 answers
93 answers
91 answers
75 answers
45 answers
43 answers
41 answers
34 answers
30 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1O1P3S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SLOPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLOPS:

29% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
TONER
10% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.2%
TIARE 6.30 bits
10.8%
TONER 5.39 bits
10.2%
RAILE 5.39 bits
6.5%
THANE 5.25 bits
4.3%
URATE 5.44 bits
4.0%
PRICE 5.32 bits
3.9%
BRACE 4.90 bits
3.8%
BRANE 4.71 bits
3.2%
LOYAL 4.14 bits
1.9%
CARET 4.55 bits

Research on SLOPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLOPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,686 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,198 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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

One syllable Say it SLAHPS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SLOPS is a kind of feed or wear.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SLOPS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 of 5).

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).