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

BECKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of beck

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

Etymology

Formed with -s (hypocoristic suffix).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it BEHKS.

Rhymes with DECKS SPECS FEDEX NECKS EXECS

Use BECKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.1% 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 BECKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BECKS 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 76.7% of games, misses completely in 23.3%, and leaves about 260 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,281 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 BECKS 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
260 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BECKS 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#10,281 Rank among openers
Opening with BECKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,281 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
735
4 guesses
1,316
5 guesses
244
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
21%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

BECKS can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

555 answers
405 answers
237 answers
170 answers
144 answers
134 answers
84 answers
66 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
35 answers
28 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1C3K5S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing BECKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BECKS:

23% chance
Suggested:
TALON
17% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.3% →
TALON 5.84 bits
17.0% →
ARIEL 5.20 bits
9.9% →
SAINT 5.28 bits
7.1% →
STRAE 4.82 bits
6.0% →
CAIRN 5.28 bits
5.6% →
REATE 4.51 bits
3.5% →
ORATE 4.87 bits
2.8% →
ROANY 4.71 bits
1.6% →
RAILE 4.26 bits
1.5% →
CLARY 3.71 bits

Research on BECKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BECKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,216 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,108 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
BECKS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).