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

CORKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cork

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of cork

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 CORKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CORKS 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 78.3% of games, misses completely in 21.7%, and leaves about 207 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,278 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 CORKS 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.

4.56 Entropy (bits)
207 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CORKS 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,278 Rank among openers
Opening with CORKS left 2 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 3.67 average. It ranks #5,278 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
933
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
215
6 guesses
22
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:
ORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
28%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

CORKS can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

515 answers
297 answers
257 answers
130 answers
112 answers
101 answers
94 answers
64 answers
59 answers
54 answers
45 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1R1K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing CORKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CORKS:

22% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
13% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.7%
ANILE 6.17 bits
12.5%
ARIEL 5.21 bits
10.8%
STALE 5.78 bits
5.5%
ALINE 5.43 bits
4.7%
LEANT 4.37 bits
4.3%
ATONE 4.35 bits
4.0%
LIANE 5.07 bits
2.7%
STANE 4.83 bits
2.5%
MATEY 4.58 bits
2.3%
LIANE 4.90 bits

Research on CORKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CORKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,233 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,994 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 3.69, 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 KAWRKS.

Rhymes with FORKS YORKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CORKS is a kind of bark or cover.

Synonyms bob

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CORKS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

The bottles were stopped with corks.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The champagne corks were popping.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (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).