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

VOLTA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈvoʊltə/

Noun

A turning; a time (chiefly used in phrases signifying that the part is to be repeated).

Noun

A dance for couples popular during the late Renaissance, associated with the galliard and done to the same kind of music.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Portuguese Volta, from volta (“turnaround, return”); at some point of time the river marked the point of return for the Portuguese traders.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VOHLTUH.

Use VOLTA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% 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 VOLTA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VOLTA 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 83.0% of games, misses completely in 17.0%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,361 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 VOLTA 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VOLTA 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,361 Rank among openers
Opening with VOLTA left 2 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,361 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
852
4 guesses
1,182
5 guesses
234
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALOT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
24%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

VOLTA can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

406 answers
298 answers
172 answers
159 answers
150 answers
140 answers
126 answers
123 answers
59 answers
55 answers
49 answers
44 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4O1L1T1A1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing VOLTA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VOLTA:

17% chance
Suggested:
SIREN
12% chance
Suggested:
SACRE
7% chance
Suggested:
HEIST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.0% →
SIREN 6.04 bits
12.5% →
SACRE 5.53 bits
7.2% →
HEIST 5.40 bits
6.7% →
SLIER 5.07 bits
6.3% →
SNARE 4.61 bits
5.9% →
CRINE 5.44 bits
5.3% →
CRISE 4.84 bits
5.2% →
GRONE 4.46 bits
2.5% →
SENOR 4.53 bits
2.3% →
BARON 4.74 bits

Research on VOLTA

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

Optimal play

Opening with VOLTA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,955 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,368 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
VOLTA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).