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

SUMPS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 78.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of sump

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of sump

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 SUMPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SUMPS 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 56.0% of games, misses completely in 44.0%, and leaves about 517 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,629 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 SUMPS 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.

3.45 Entropy (bits)
517 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
78.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SUMPS 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,629 Rank among openers
Opening with SUMPS left 4 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 3.83 average. It ranks #12,629 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
715
4 guesses
1,228
5 guesses
348
6 guesses
21
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:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
56%
Green tile
28%
All gray
44%

Feedback distribution

SUMPS can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1045 answers
204 answers
140 answers
139 answers
136 answers
121 answers
107 answers
55 answers
38 answers
34 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1U1M3P3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing SUMPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SUMPS:

44% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
9% chance
Suggested:
LEANT
6% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

44.0%
ARIEL 6.07 bits
8.6%
LEANT 5.36 bits
5.9%
TRONE 5.37 bits
5.9%
PAIRE 5.42 bits
5.7%
MAIRE 5.49 bits
5.1%
ROATE 5.60 bits
4.5%
LATER 4.57 bits
2.3%
ALINE 4.37 bits
1.6%
STUNK 3.88 bits
1.4%
OATER 4.40 bits

Research on SUMPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SUMPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,926 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,871 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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 SUHMPS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SUMPS is a kind of reservoir or well.

Synonyms sink

Familiarity and learning

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