CRANK
Yes, CRANK was the Wordle answer on January 8, 2022 (Wordle #203).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈkɹæŋk/[ˈkʰɹʷæŋk]/ˈkɹeɪ̯ŋk/
- Adjective
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Strange; weird; odd.
- Adjective
-
Sick; unwell.
- Noun
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An ill-tempered or nasty person.
“Billy-Bob is a nasty old crank! He chased my cat away.”
- Noun
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A twist or turn of the mind; caprice; whim;
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English crank, cronk, from a shortening of Old English crancstæf (“weaving tool, crank”, literally “bent or crooked staff”), the first element ultimately related to Etymology 1 above.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it KRANGK.
Rhymes with THANK FRANK BLANK DRANK PRANK
Related meanings
Synonyms ice GLASS TRASH tender nut starter
Opposites stable
In a sentence
What a crank he is!
Can you crank up the heat?
Use CRANK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 8, 2022 (#203).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 8, 2022 (#203).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →CRANK in Connections
4 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #938
Reveal this appearance's category
CRANK appeared in SPOOL (green group).
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· Puzzle #820
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CRANK appeared in INCREASE, WITH "UP" (green group).
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· Puzzle #436
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CRANK appeared in ROTATE (green group).
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· Puzzle #187
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CRANK appeared in CURMUDGEON (yellow group).
How CRANK performs as a guess
CRANK is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 79.9% of games, misses completely in 20.1%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,326 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe CRANK 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How CRANK 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches CRANK in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
CRANK can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for CRANK; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing CRANK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CRANK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing CRANK:
Research on CRANK
Game-tree analysis and word research for CRANK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with CRANK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,802 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,152 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
- CRANK 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.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 50 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).