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

BEAKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /biːks/

Noun

plural of beak

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of beak

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it BEEKS.

Rhymes with WEEKS SEEKS LEAKS PEAKS GEEKS

Related meanings

Synonyms bill pick peck nozzle SNOUT nib

In a sentence

Do all birds have beaks?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Small crows have the largest beaks.
© tatoeba.org contributor honestlang (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use BEAKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% 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 BEAKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BEAKS 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 83.5% of games, misses completely in 16.5%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,252 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 BEAKS 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.

4.60 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BEAKS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,252 Rank among openers
Opening with BEAKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after 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 #8,252 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
775
4 guesses
1,272
5 guesses
231
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
30%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

BEAKS can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

394 answers
328 answers
252 answers
157 answers
133 answers
132 answers
110 answers
74 answers
60 answers
56 answers
47 answers
39 answers
36 answers
33 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1A1K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing BEAKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BEAKS:

17% chance
Suggested:
DROIT
14% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
11% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.5% →
DROIT 5.63 bits
13.8% →
TRIED 5.37 bits
10.6% →
TALON 5.17 bits
6.6% →
SPOUT 5.03 bits
5.6% →
RATEL 4.69 bits
5.5% →
SPIRE 4.70 bits
4.6% →
RONTE 4.40 bits
3.1% →
TRICE 4.29 bits
2.5% →
SALTY 4.50 bits
2.3% →
SHALT 4.11 bits

Research on BEAKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BEAKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,935 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 BEAKS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, 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
BEAKS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.4 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).