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

DORKS

DORKS 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 dork

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of dork

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 DORKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DORKS 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 78.0% of games, misses completely in 22.0%, and leaves about 207 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,363 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 DORKS 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.

4.45 Entropy (bits)
207 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DORKS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,363 Rank among openers
Opening with DORKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,363 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
894
4 guesses
1,196
5 guesses
210
6 guesses
16
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
25%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

DORKS can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

522 answers
279 answers
256 answers
122 answers
112 answers
100 answers
91 answers
71 answers
67 answers
54 answers
52 answers
48 answers
41 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1R1K5S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing DORKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DORKS:

22% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
12% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.0%
LIANE 6.13 bits
11.8%
ARIEL 5.18 bits
10.8%
STALE 5.78 bits
5.1%
ALINE 5.37 bits
4.7%
THALE 4.45 bits
4.2%
ALINE 5.42 bits
3.8%
ATONE 4.37 bits
3.0%
SPATE 4.89 bits
2.8%
CAGEY 4.64 bits
2.3%
SLANT 4.17 bits

Research on DORKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with DORKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,773 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,429 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 DAWRKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DORKS is a kind of actor.

Synonyms jerk

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DORKS 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

Tom and Mary are such dorks.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Tom and Mary are both huge dorks and it's adorable.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).