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

BURKA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɝkə/

Noun

Alternative form of burqa.

Noun

A dress made from felt or karakul (the short curly fur of young lambs of the breed of that name), traditionally worn by men of the Caucasus region.

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 BURKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BURKA 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 245 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,726 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 BURKA 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.

4.23 Entropy (bits)
245 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 35% of evaluated openers
1.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BURKA 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,726 Rank among openers
Opening with BURKA left 1 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,726 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
824
4 guesses
1,182
5 guesses
275
6 guesses
17
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:
ARU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
24%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

BURKA can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

520 answers
390 answers
274 answers
199 answers
111 answers
91 answers
67 answers
58 answers
53 answers
42 answers
42 answers
38 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
24 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1R1K5A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing BURKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BURKA:

22% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
16% chance
Suggested:
STILE
12% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
TOILE 6.14 bits
16.4%
STILE 5.47 bits
11.5%
TOISE 5.15 bits
8.4%
LEAST 4.71 bits
4.7%
STONE 5.25 bits
3.8%
STIME 4.43 bits
2.8%
SHOTE 4.78 bits
2.4%
SCOTE 4.56 bits
2.2%
CLONE 4.45 bits
1.8%
SLICE 4.70 bits

Research on BURKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with BURKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,701 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 #3,808 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BURKUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BURKA is a kind of garment.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BURKA 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

Can you wear a burka in the Netherlands?
© tatoeba.org contributor megamanenm (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).