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

CAKED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /keɪkt/

Verb

simple past and past participle of cake

Adjective

Congealed into a cakelike consistency; (of something covered in such a material) Coated with such a congealed mass.

“Great, I had to ride in the rain, and now my bike is caked in mud.”

Adjective

having a defined butt

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KAYKT.

Rhymes with BAKED FAKED RAKED ACHED

Related meanings

Synonyms bar coat PATTY

In a sentence

Tom was caked with mud.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
There's mud caked to my shoes.
© tatoeba.org contributor Teangloir (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CAKED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% 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 CAKED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAKED 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,879 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 CAKED 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.

4.69 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAKED 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,879 Rank among openers
Opening with CAKED 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,879 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
813
4 guesses
1,258
5 guesses
217
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
34%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

CAKED can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
285 answers
212 answers
171 answers
140 answers
123 answers
64 answers
60 answers
60 answers
49 answers
48 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
39 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1K5E1D2
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing CAKED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAKED:

18% chance
Suggested:
MOIST
12% chance
Suggested:
STIRE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.8% →
MOIST 5.78 bits
12.0% →
STIRE 5.33 bits
8.9% →
TRAIL 5.34 bits
7.2% →
SENOR 4.51 bits
5.9% →
SLART 5.36 bits
5.2% →
SONLY 4.68 bits
2.7% →
TUNIC 4.37 bits
2.5% →
DROIT 4.58 bits
2.5% →
DEIGN 4.42 bits
2.1% →
SOILY 4.38 bits

Research on CAKED

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAKED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,160 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with CAKED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72; proven optimal play reaches 3.69. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
CAKED 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).