5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

WHELP

Yes, WHELP was the Wordle answer on July 26, 2021 (Wordle #37).

As an opener, it rules out about 89.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WHELP Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /wɛlp//ʍɛlp/

Noun

A young offspring of a various carnivores (canid, ursid, felid, pinniped), especially of a dog or a wolf, the young of a bear or similar mammal (lion, tiger, seal); a pup, wolf cub.

Noun

An insolent youth; a mere child.

Verb

To give birth.

“The bitch whelped.”

Interjection

Alternative form of welp (“well”).

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: July 26, 2021 (#37).

See the full page for that puzzle: July 26, 2021 (#37).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How WHELP performs as a guess

WHELP is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.4% of games, misses completely in 22.6%, and leaves about 249 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,715 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

W___P W in the 1st position and P in the 5th position W__L_ W in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _H__P H in the 2nd position and P in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in WHELP.

First-turn measures

All four describe WHELP 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.

4.25 Entropy (bits)
249 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
89.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 36% of evaluated openers
1.70 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHELP 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,715 Rank among openers
Opening with WHELP solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,715 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
772
4 guesses
1,275
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
11
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
1 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
22%
All gray
23%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S I L E N
D E U C E
W H E L P

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches WHELP in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

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

536 answers
441 answers
194 answers
142 answers
107 answers
88 answers
85 answers
75 answers
73 answers
53 answers
47 answers
38 answers
35 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4E1L1P3
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

TRAIN ROATE SONAR LAREE COAST PATIO

Strategy after playing WHELP

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHELP:

23% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
19% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SONAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.6% →
TRAIN 6.01 bits
18.6% →
ROATE 5.29 bits
8.2% →
SONAR 5.14 bits
6.0% →
LAREE 4.63 bits
4.5% →
COAST 4.92 bits
3.7% →
PATIO 5.08 bits
3.6% →
PRISE 4.86 bits
3.2% →
IDYLL 4.12 bits
3.1% →
TRADE 4.42 bits
2.2% →
ROAST 4.70 bits

Research on WHELP

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHELP, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,824 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 #3,565 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, 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

One syllable Say it WEHLP. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WHELP is a kind of young or have.

Synonyms pup

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WHELP 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).