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

YATES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of yate

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 YATES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts YATES 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 90.6% of games, misses completely in 9.4%, and leaves about 98 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,899 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 YATES 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.

5.21 Entropy (bits)
98 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 92% of evaluated openers
0.74 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How YATES 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,899 Rank among openers
Opening with YATES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,899 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
861
4 guesses
1,212
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
19
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
2 vowels
Common:
AEST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
29%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

YATES can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

222 answers
201 answers
163 answers
142 answers
134 answers
122 answers
109 answers
84 answers
84 answers
67 answers
65 answers
64 answers
57 answers
51 answers
45 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Y4A1T1E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing YATES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing YATES:

9% chance
Suggested:
CLING
8% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
7% chance
Suggested:
GRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.4%
CLING 5.52 bits
8.5%
NOIRE 5.10 bits
6.9%
GRAIL 4.99 bits
6.0%
RIONE 4.12 bits
5.6%
MOLDY 4.47 bits
5.1%
BLARE 4.67 bits
4.6%
GROUT 5.05 bits
3.5%
SPUNK 4.58 bits
3.5%
SNORE 4.41 bits
2.8%
HOIST 4.40 bits

Research on YATES

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

Optimal play

Opening with YATES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,957 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with YATES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68; proven optimal play reaches 3.67. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 YAYTS.

Rhymes with RATES DATES GATES HATES MATES

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
YATES sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).