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

BUCKO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 83.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbʌkəʊ//ˈbʌkoʊ/

Noun

A boastful or bullying man.

Noun

Used as a term of address: young lad, friend, pal.

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 BUCKO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BUCKO 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 63.9% of games, misses completely in 36.1%, and leaves about 400 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,456 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 BUCKO 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.

3.74 Entropy (bits)
400 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BUCKO 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,456 Rank among openers
Opening with BUCKO left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,456 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
749
4 guesses
1,247
5 guesses
288
6 guesses
29
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:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
20%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

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

856 answers
363 answers
177 answers
129 answers
103 answers
78 answers
73 answers
57 answers
52 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1C3K5O1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing BUCKO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BUCKO:

36% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
15% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
7% chance
Suggested:
CHARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.1%
TIARE 6.23 bits
15.3%
TRONE 5.29 bits
7.5%
CHARE 5.52 bits
5.4%
STANE 5.34 bits
4.3%
SPALE 4.61 bits
3.3%
LAIDE 5.07 bits
3.1%
SIREN 4.65 bits
2.4%
SATER 5.01 bits
2.2%
RONTE 3.99 bits
1.4%
CARLE 4.03 bits

Research on BUCKO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BUCKO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,793 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,525 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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.

How it sounds

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BUCKO 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.

In a sentence

All of my sales are cash up front, bucko.
© tatoeba.org contributor Babilfrenzo (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).