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

BERKO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Mad; crazy, especially with rage.

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

Etymology

Possibly from berserk with suffix -o.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BURKOH.

Use BERKO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% 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 BERKO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BERKO 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 81.8% of games, misses completely in 18.2%, and leaves about 187 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,957 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 BERKO 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.

4.54 Entropy (bits)
187 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BERKO 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,957 Rank among openers
Opening with BERKO left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,957 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
856
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
248
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
26%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

BERKO can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

434 answers
313 answers
222 answers
195 answers
140 answers
107 answers
104 answers
91 answers
57 answers
56 answers
55 answers
50 answers
36 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1R1K5O1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing BERKO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BERKO:

18% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
9% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.2% →
SAINT 6.04 bits
13.1% →
SLANT 5.73 bits
9.3% →
SLANT 5.20 bits
8.2% →
AINEE 4.56 bits
5.9% →
TRAIN 5.15 bits
4.5% →
SLATE 4.67 bits
4.4% →
ARSON 4.25 bits
3.8% →
SONCE 4.47 bits
2.4% →
SOWNE 3.52 bits
2.3% →
RATEL 4.06 bits

Research on BERKO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BERKO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,696 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 #3,416 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, 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
BERKO sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

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).