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

TOPES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of tope

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of tope

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Related meanings

Synonyms CLEAR lead COVER pass DRINK CROWN

Opposites bottom side

Use TOPES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.9% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How TOPES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TOPES 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 86.9% of games, misses completely in 13.1%, and leaves about 122 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,545 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 TOPES 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.

5.13 Entropy (bits)
122 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOPES 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,545 Rank among openers
Opening with TOPES left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,545 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
967
4 guesses
1,139
5 guesses
164
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
31%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

TOPES can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

312 answers
280 answers
136 answers
127 answers
127 answers
106 answers
105 answers
85 answers
78 answers
67 answers
56 answers
54 answers
45 answers
38 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1P3E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing TOPES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOPES:

13% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN
12% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
6% chance
Suggested:
ACORN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.1% →
CAIRN 5.96 bits
11.7% →
LEARE 5.47 bits
5.7% →
ACORN 5.21 bits
5.3% →
SHALY 5.04 bits
5.3% →
ARIEL 4.27 bits
4.4% →
CLARY 4.60 bits
4.4% →
HAUNT 4.91 bits
3.6% →
LEARE 4.81 bits
3.3% →
SEARE 4.54 bits
2.8% →
SAINT 4.55 bits

Research on TOPES

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOPES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #876 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #425 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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.

Familiarity and learning

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