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

TOPOS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtoʊpɒs/

Noun

A literary theme or motif; a rhetorical convention or formula.

Noun

A category that behaves like the category of sheaves of sets on a topological space (or, more generally, on a site).

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 TOPOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TOPOS 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 69.7% of games, misses completely in 30.3%, and leaves about 296 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,614 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 TOPOS 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.

4.10 Entropy (bits)
296 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 28% of evaluated openers
1.84 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOPOS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,614 Rank among openers
Opening with TOPOS 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,614 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
825
4 guesses
1,232
5 guesses
221
6 guesses
20
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
2 vowels
Common:
OST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
26%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

TOPOS can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

719 answers
232 answers
220 answers
135 answers
129 answers
117 answers
104 answers
90 answers
62 answers
55 answers
36 answers
34 answers
34 answers
29 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1P3O1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing TOPOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOPOS:

30% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
HEART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.3%
RAILE 6.30 bits
9.8%
RAILE 5.46 bits
9.3%
HEART 5.44 bits
5.7%
CARLE 4.78 bits
5.4%
CRANE 5.53 bits
4.9%
RAILE 4.76 bits
4.4%
LIANE 5.27 bits
3.8%
RAINE 5.18 bits
2.6%
SPARE 4.93 bits
2.3%
MARLE 4.62 bits

Research on TOPOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOPOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,746 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,472 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 TOHPOHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TOPOS is a kind of theme.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TOPOS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).