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

TATOU

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

The giant armadillo (Priodontes maximus)

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 TATOU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TATOU 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 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 201 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,524 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TATOU 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.

4.35 Entropy (bits)
201 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 42% of evaluated openers
1.60 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TATOU 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#11,524 Rank among openers
Opening with TATOU left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,524 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
773
4 guesses
1,195
5 guesses
306
6 guesses
36
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
3 vowels
Common:
AOTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
26%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

TATOU can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

418 answers
325 answers
272 answers
218 answers
170 answers
115 answers
92 answers
65 answers
58 answers
56 answers
51 answers
50 answers
37 answers
35 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1T1O1U1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing TATOU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TATOU:

18% chance
Suggested:
SILER
14% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
11% chance
Suggested:
DROLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6%
SILER 5.82 bits
13.7%
SLANE 5.37 bits
11.5%
DROLE 5.14 bits
9.2%
SLIER 5.15 bits
7.2%
SLYER 4.74 bits
4.8%
SLIER 5.17 bits
3.9%
SLANE 4.69 bits
2.7%
MORAL 4.36 bits
2.4%
PLIER 4.17 bits
2.4%
SHIRE 4.47 bits

Research on TATOU

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

Optimal play

Opening with TATOU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,930 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 TATOU can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 TATOO. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TATOU 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).