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

COOKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kʊks/

Noun

plural of cook

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of cook

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KUUKS.

Rhymes with LOOKS BOOKS HOOKS NOOKS ROOKS

Related meanings

Synonyms make READY fix fake prepare manipulate

In a sentence

Who cooks in your house?
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)
We have great cooks here.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use COOKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 82.9% 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 COOKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COOKS 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 63.3% of games, misses completely in 36.7%, and leaves about 409 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,004 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 COOKS 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.

3.72 Entropy (bits)
409 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COOKS 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,004 Rank among openers
Opening with COOKS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.81 average. It ranks #12,004 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
727
4 guesses
1,262
5 guesses
298
6 guesses
28

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
30%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

COOKS can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

875 answers
353 answers
146 answers
128 answers
125 answers
100 answers
91 answers
44 answers
39 answers
39 answers
33 answers
30 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1O1K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing COOKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COOKS:

37% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
15% chance
Suggested:
STALE
6% chance
Suggested:
RATEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.7% →
RAILE 6.27 bits
14.8% →
STALE 5.68 bits
6.1% →
RATEL 4.68 bits
5.4% →
MANOR 5.10 bits
5.2% →
TIARE 5.29 bits
4.2% →
RAILE 5.24 bits
3.8% →
GRATE 4.73 bits
1.8% →
BLAER 4.60 bits
1.6% →
PEART 4.06 bits
1.6% →
STIRE 4.00 bits

Research on COOKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with COOKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,953 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,673 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COOKS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).