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

COCKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 79.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkɒki//ˈkɔkɪj//ˈkɑki/

Adjective

Overly confident; arrogant and boastful.

Noun

A familiar name for a cockatoo.

Noun

Clipping of cockatoo farmer (“small-scale farmer”); (by extension) any farmer or owner of rural land.

Verb

To operate a small-scale farm.

Alternative forms: cockey, cockie

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 COCKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COCKY 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 58.8% of games, misses completely in 41.2%, and leaves about 487 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,986 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 COCKY 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.

3.35 Entropy (bits)
487 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 5% of evaluated openers
2.59 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COCKY 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,986 Rank among openers
Opening with COCKY 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 3.90 average. It ranks #13,986 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
26
3 guesses
631
4 guesses
1,281
5 guesses
381
6 guesses
33
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
O

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
34%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

COCKY can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

978 answers
289 answers
229 answers
157 answers
115 answers
96 answers
75 answers
62 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1C3K5Y4
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing COCKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COCKY:

41% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

41.2%
RAISE 6.19 bits
12.2%
TRONE 5.26 bits
9.6%
SLART 4.73 bits
6.6%
RANSE 4.79 bits
4.8%
TIARE 5.22 bits
4.0%
MAIRE 5.27 bits
3.2%
SLART 5.00 bits
2.6%
DROLE 3.79 bits
1.4%
PARLE 4.65 bits
1.2%
SAULT 3.98 bits

Research on COCKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with COCKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,952 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.09 guesses at best and is rank #7,071 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KAHKEE.

Rhymes with ROCKY KHAKI MACHI

Related meanings

Synonyms assertive

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COCKY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

I don't like cocky people.
© tatoeba.org contributor Topkek (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Don't you get cocky on me, now.
© 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).