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

VACAS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of vaca

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 VACAS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VACAS 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 68.2% of games, misses completely in 31.8%, and leaves about 341 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,871 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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 VACAS 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.

3.78 Entropy (bits)
341 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VACAS 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,871 Rank among openers
Opening with VACAS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #12,871 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
669
4 guesses
1,302
5 guesses
321
6 guesses
22
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:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
23%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

VACAS can come back 63 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

755 answers
319 answers
219 answers
185 answers
152 answers
99 answers
79 answers
57 answers
46 answers
43 answers
43 answers
39 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4A1C3A1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing VACAS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VACAS:

32% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
13% chance
Suggested:
ROUET
9% chance
Suggested:
ALERT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.8%
TOILE 6.00 bits
13.4%
ROUET 5.47 bits
9.2%
ALERT 5.42 bits
7.8%
CRINE 5.30 bits
6.4%
RONTE 4.77 bits
4.2%
THALE 4.55 bits
3.3%
RENAL 4.53 bits
2.4%
CHARE 4.40 bits
1.9%
DOREE 4.60 bits
1.8%
TRONE 4.38 bits

Research on VACAS

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

Optimal play

Opening with VACAS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,871 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 #5,849 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VAYKUHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VACAS 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).