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

BULKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of bulk

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of bulk

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 BULKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BULKS 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 67.2% of games, misses completely in 32.8%, and leaves about 348 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,642 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 BULKS 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.

3.92 Entropy (bits)
348 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BULKS 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
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,642 Rank among openers
Opening with BULKS 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,642 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
828
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
261
6 guesses
14
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
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
21%
All gray
33%

Feedback distribution

BULKS can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

779 answers
308 answers
275 answers
110 answers
80 answers
77 answers
70 answers
65 answers
54 answers
52 answers
43 answers
40 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1L1K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing BULKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BULKS:

33% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
13% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.8%
TIARE 6.21 bits
13.0%
TIARE 5.80 bits
11.6%
TIARE 5.49 bits
4.6%
TRONE 5.34 bits
3.4%
MORNE 4.28 bits
3.2%
THALE 4.91 bits
2.9%
IRATE 5.19 bits
2.7%
RAILE 4.54 bits
2.3%
ATONE 4.48 bits
2.2%
CATER 4.99 bits

Research on BULKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BULKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,905 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,672 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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

One syllable Say it BUHLKS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BULKS is a kind of number or magnitude.

Synonyms majority mass volume BULGE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BULKS 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.
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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; 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).