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

CAWKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cawk

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

Use CAWKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.4% 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 CAWKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAWKS 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 70.9% of games, misses completely in 29.1%, and leaves about 301 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,387 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 CAWKS 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.

4.03 Entropy (bits)
301 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAWKS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#9,387 Rank among openers
Opening with CAWKS 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,387 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
797
4 guesses
1,261
5 guesses
249
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
25%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

CAWKS can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

693 answers
306 answers
263 answers
171 answers
104 answers
93 answers
83 answers
67 answers
53 answers
38 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1W4K5S1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing CAWKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAWKS:

29% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
13% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
11% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.1% →
TOILE 6.03 bits
12.8% →
ALERT 5.62 bits
11.0% →
ROUET 5.55 bits
7.2% →
TRINE 4.73 bits
4.4% →
STALE 4.95 bits
3.9% →
TUILE 4.99 bits
3.5% →
NOIRE 5.11 bits
2.8% →
DROLE 5.07 bits
2.2% →
POLEY 4.07 bits
1.6% →
LEANT 4.40 bits

Research on CAWKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAWKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,569 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #4,012 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).