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

CHARK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /t͡ʃɑː(ɹ)k/

Noun

Charcoal; coke.

Noun

A pointed stick, which when placed with the point against another piece of wood, and spun rapidly in alternate directions with the aid of attached cords, produces enough heat by friction to create a fire; a fire drill.

Verb

To reduce by strong heat, as to produce charcoal or coke; to calcine.

Verb

To make a grating sound.

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 CHARK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CHARK 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 76.8% of games, misses completely in 23.2%, and leaves about 228 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,910 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 CHARK 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
228 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHARK 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,910 Rank among openers
Opening with CHARK 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 3.67 average. It ranks #4,910 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
934
4 guesses
1,125
5 guesses
228
6 guesses
15
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:
AR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
29%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

CHARK can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

550 answers
314 answers
293 answers
131 answers
95 answers
77 answers
60 answers
51 answers
45 answers
44 answers
38 answers
37 answers
37 answers
37 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3H4A1R1K5
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing CHARK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHARK:

23% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
13% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
12% chance
Suggested:
SALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.2%
TOILE 6.13 bits
13.2%
TOISE 5.31 bits
12.3%
SALET 5.38 bits
5.5%
TALER 4.73 bits
4.0%
STILE 5.25 bits
3.2%
SEITY 4.96 bits
2.5%
NOISE 4.90 bits
2.1%
SEITY 4.46 bits
1.9%
SIENT 5.00 bits
1.9%
SNIDE 3.76 bits

Research on CHARK

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

Optimal play

Opening with CHARK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,495 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 #2,840 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 CHAHRK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CHARK 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).