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

CHANK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈt͡ʃæŋk/[ˈt͡ʃʰæŋk]/ˈt͡ʃeɪ̯ŋk/

Noun

The large spiral shell of several species of sea conch, much used in making bangles, especially Turbinella pyrum.

Verb

To eat noisily; to champ or chomp.

Noun

chink.

Alternative forms: chanquo, chonk, chunk

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 CHANK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CHANK 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 71.8% of games, misses completely in 28.2%, and leaves about 273 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,237 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 CHANK 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.

4.36 Entropy (bits)
273 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 42% of evaluated openers
1.59 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHANK 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,237 Rank among openers
Opening with CHANK solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,237 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
892
4 guesses
1,160
5 guesses
231
6 guesses
18
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:
AN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
31%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

CHANK can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

670 answers
334 answers
164 answers
132 answers
93 answers
85 answers
81 answers
62 answers
61 answers
53 answers
33 answers
33 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3H4A1N1K5
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing CHANK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHANK:

28% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
SIREN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.2%
TOILE 6.04 bits
14.1%
TALER 5.64 bits
6.9%
SIREN 5.32 bits
5.6%
STIRE 5.20 bits
3.9%
TORSE 5.16 bits
3.6%
RANGE 4.48 bits
3.4%
TOISE 4.78 bits
2.6%
STIRE 4.88 bits
2.6%
TOILE 4.91 bits
2.2%
TORSE 5.11 bits

Research on CHANK

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

Optimal play

Opening with CHANK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,588 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,912 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 CHANGK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CHANK 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.

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).