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

CAKEY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Alternative spelling of caky.

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 CAKEY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAKEY 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 85.4% of games, misses completely in 14.6%, and leaves about 165 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,150 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 CAKEY 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.

4.65 Entropy (bits)
165 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.30 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAKEY 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,150 Rank among openers
Opening with CAKEY 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 3.76 average. It ranks #10,150 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
777
4 guesses
1,238
5 guesses
262
6 guesses
28
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:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
43%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

CAKEY can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

347 answers
307 answers
226 answers
203 answers
163 answers
156 answers
85 answers
63 answers
62 answers
48 answers
46 answers
41 answers
41 answers
38 answers
34 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1K5E1Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing CAKEY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAKEY:

15% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
13% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6%
SNORT 5.98 bits
12.9%
TOISE 5.16 bits
9.5%
TRAIL 5.42 bits
8.6%
SENOR 4.38 bits
6.9%
SLART 5.26 bits
6.6%
SOILY 4.02 bits
3.6%
SONAR 4.37 bits
2.7%
SLART 3.48 bits
2.6%
TONIC 4.32 bits
2.0%
SIREE 4.13 bits

Research on CAKEY

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAKEY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,973 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 CAKEY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76; proven optimal play reaches 3.73. 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.

How it sounds

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CAKEY 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

Tom likes fudgy brownies, but Mary likes them cakey.
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).