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

UPLAY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ʌpˈleɪ/

Verb

To lay up; hoard.

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 UPLAY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts UPLAY 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 216 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,864 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 UPLAY 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.

4.44 Entropy (bits)
216 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How UPLAY 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,864 Rank among openers
Opening with UPLAY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,864 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
880
4 guesses
1,202
5 guesses
207
6 guesses
14
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
28%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

UPLAY can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

521 answers
348 answers
187 answers
159 answers
123 answers
107 answers
82 answers
72 answers
59 answers
55 answers
52 answers
44 answers
43 answers
39 answers
30 answers
28 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1P3L1A1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing UPLAY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing UPLAY:

22% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
15% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
8% chance
Suggested:
TORSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
TRINE 6.24 bits
14.7%
TRACE 5.60 bits
7.9%
TORSE 5.58 bits
6.7%
SIREN 4.81 bits
5.2%
SNARE 4.65 bits
4.5%
TRODE 4.79 bits
3.5%
PROSE 5.19 bits
3.0%
TARSE 4.06 bits
2.5%
TRODE 4.48 bits
2.3%
SOUCE 4.07 bits

Research on UPLAY

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

Optimal play

Opening with UPLAY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,668 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 #3,375 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 UHPLAY. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
UPLAY 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).