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

FORKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of fork

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of fork

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 FORKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FORKS 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 75.1% of games, misses completely in 24.9%, and leaves about 251 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,945 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe FORKS 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.

4.22 Entropy (bits)
251 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 34% of evaluated openers
1.72 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FORKS 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
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,945 Rank among openers
Opening with FORKS left 1 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 3.74 average. It ranks #8,945 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
817
4 guesses
1,210
5 guesses
261
6 guesses
18
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)
75%
Green tile
26%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

FORKS can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

590 answers
314 answers
268 answers
141 answers
139 answers
104 answers
71 answers
69 answers
56 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4O1R1K5S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing FORKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FORKS:

25% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
13% chance
Suggested:
CADET
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.9%
LIANE 6.13 bits
13.2%
CADET 5.36 bits
11.3%
STALE 5.77 bits
5.9%
ALINE 5.45 bits
5.9%
LEANT 4.41 bits
4.4%
DAINE 4.36 bits
3.0%
CAGEY 4.56 bits
2.9%
SPATE 4.92 bits
2.4%
STOOL 4.25 bits
1.9%
TUILE 4.93 bits

Research on FORKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FORKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,069 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,565 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 3.75, 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 FAWRKS.

Rhymes with CORKS YORKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, FORKS is a kind of cutlery or division.

Synonyms separate branch crotch branching pitchfork

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FORKS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

These are not your forks.
© tatoeba.org contributor mayok (CC BY 2.0 FR)
How many forks do you need?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (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).