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

VOLVA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A cup-shaped mass at the base of various fungi.

Noun

The membranous covering which completely encloses many fungi in the early stage of growth.

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 VOLVA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VOLVA 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 73.8% of games, misses completely in 26.2%, and leaves about 322 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,825 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.89 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 VOLVA 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.

3.67 Entropy (bits)
322 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.27 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VOLVA 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.

3.89 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,825 Rank among openers
Opening with VOLVA solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.89 average. It ranks #13,825 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
630
4 guesses
1,249
5 guesses
404
6 guesses
26
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:
ALO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
21%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

VOLVA can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

621 answers
462 answers
211 answers
197 answers
191 answers
176 answers
69 answers
52 answers
44 answers
37 answers
33 answers
25 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4O1L1V4A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing VOLVA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VOLVA:

26% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
19% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.2%
TRINE 6.18 bits
19.5%
TARSE 5.63 bits
8.9%
TRINE 5.41 bits
8.3%
SLIER 5.07 bits
8.0%
STANE 4.64 bits
7.4%
TRONE 4.53 bits
2.9%
BARON 4.84 bits
2.2%
SENOR 3.76 bits
1.9%
SIDLE 4.44 bits
1.6%
SIREN 4.32 bits

Research on VOLVA

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

Optimal play

Opening with VOLVA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,108 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.03 guesses at best and is rank #6,599 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.89, at or below the proven-optimal 3.92, 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 VAHLVUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, VOLVA is a kind of whole.

Familiarity and learning

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