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

WHOPS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of whop

Noun

plural of whop

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

Related meanings

Synonyms bash sock WHACK bop

Use WHOPS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.4% 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 WHOPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHOPS 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 66.4% of games, misses completely in 33.6%, and leaves about 349 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,349 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe WHOPS 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.

3.96 Entropy (bits)
349 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHOPS 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
#8,349 Rank among openers
Opening with WHOPS 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 #8,349 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
801
4 guesses
1,258
5 guesses
231
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
21%
All gray
34%

Feedback distribution

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

800 answers
259 answers
256 answers
130 answers
102 answers
100 answers
75 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
39 answers
34 answers
34 answers
29 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4O1P3S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing WHOPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHOPS:

34% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TALER
11% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.6% →
RAILE 6.27 bits
10.9% →
TALER 5.26 bits
10.7% →
SLATE 5.57 bits
5.5% →
RAILE 5.47 bits
4.3% →
BLARE 4.69 bits
4.2% →
CARTE 5.31 bits
3.1% →
STARE 5.08 bits
1.9% →
RAISE 4.18 bits
1.8% →
TIARE 4.78 bits
1.8% →
CRUET 4.34 bits

Research on WHOPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHOPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,822 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,651 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 3.78, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0).