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

CUKES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CUKES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cuke

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 CUKES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CUKES 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 79.4% of games, misses completely in 20.6%, and leaves about 208 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,803 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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___S C in the 1st position and S in the 5th position C__E_ C in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe CUKES 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.

4.46 Entropy (bits)
208 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 49% of evaluated openers
1.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CUKES 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,803 Rank among openers
Opening with CUKES left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #8,803 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
800
4 guesses
1,240
5 guesses
243
6 guesses
19
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
2 vowels
Common:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
30%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

CUKES can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

489 answers
346 answers
199 answers
191 answers
133 answers
88 answers
77 answers
73 answers
62 answers
59 answers
47 answers
46 answers
42 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3U1K5E1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

TALON TIARE SOLAR SAINT SLART GRUNT

Strategy after playing CUKES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CUKES:

21% chance
Suggested:
TALON
15% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.6% →
TALON 5.94 bits
14.6% →
TIARE 5.42 bits
8.4% →
SOLAR 4.04 bits
8.0% →
SAINT 5.30 bits
5.6% →
SLART 4.96 bits
3.7% →
GRUNT 4.85 bits
3.2% →
MEALY 3.67 bits
3.1% →
LAIRY 4.84 bits
2.6% →
TONIC 4.48 bits
2.5% →
LEARE 4.65 bits

Research on CUKES

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

Optimal play

Opening with CUKES, 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 #3,889 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, 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

One syllable Say it KYOOKS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CUKES is a kind of vegetable.

Synonyms cucumber

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CUKES sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).