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

CORKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CORKY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Of wine, contaminated by a faulty or tainted cork.

“This wine smells a bit corky; get me another bottle.”

Adjective

Consisting of, or like, cork; dry; shrivelled.

Noun

A deep bruise, usually on the leg or buttock, caused by a blow; a haematoma.

Alternative forms: corkie

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 CORKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CORKY 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 74.9% of games, misses completely in 25.1%, and leaves about 239 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,221 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

C___Y C in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position C__K_ C in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _O__Y O in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in CORKY.

First-turn measures

All four describe CORKY 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.

4.38 Entropy (bits)
239 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 44% of evaluated openers
1.57 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CORKY 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,221 Rank among openers
Opening with CORKY 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 3.72 average. It ranks #8,221 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
859
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
244
6 guesses
26
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:
OR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
36%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

CORKY can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

595 answers
320 answers
170 answers
164 answers
113 answers
104 answers
92 answers
63 answers
56 answers
52 answers
48 answers
43 answers
42 answers
35 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1R1K5Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

SLATE TEASE SAULT SLANT TRONE LIANE

Strategy after playing CORKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CORKY:

25% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
13% chance
Suggested:
TEASE
7% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.1% →
SLATE 6.44 bits
13.5% →
TEASE 5.32 bits
7.2% →
SAULT 4.71 bits
6.9% →
SLANT 5.25 bits
4.8% →
TRONE 4.45 bits
4.4% →
LIANE 5.17 bits
3.9% →
TUILE 4.54 bits
2.7% →
SAUTE 4.98 bits
2.4% →
MAILE 4.91 bits
2.2% →
STOLE 3.60 bits

Research on CORKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with CORKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,430 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #4,004 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 KAWRKEE.

Rhymes with PORKY

Related meanings

Synonyms bad

Opposites good

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CORKY 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.

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).