Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

FRISK

FRISK is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɹɪsk/

Noun

A little playful skip or leap; a brisk and lively movement.

Noun

The act of frisking, of searching for something by feeling someone's body.

“The customs officer gave me a frisk after I went through the metal detector.”

Verb

To frolic, gambol, skip, dance, leap.

Verb

To search (someone) by feeling their body and clothing.

“The police frisked the suspiciously-acting individual and found a knife as well as a bag of marijuana.”

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Middle English frisk (“lively, frisky”), from Middle French frisque (“lively, jolly, blithe, fine, spruce, gay”), of Germanic origin, perhaps from Middle Dutch frisc (“fresh”) or Old High German frisc (“fresh”), ultimately from Proto-Germanic *friskaz (“fresh”). Cognate with Icelandic frískur (“frisky, fresh”). Doublet of fresco and fresh. More at fresh.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it FRIHSK.

Rhymes with BRISK WHISK

Related meanings

Synonyms SPORT lark

In a sentence

I don't like frisk searches.
© tatoeba.org contributor Scott (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use FRISK in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How FRISK performs as a guess

FRISK 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 75.7% of games, misses completely in 24.3%, and leaves about 238 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,767 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 FRISK 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.

4.32 Entropy (bits)
238 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FRISK 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,767 Rank among openers
Opening with FRISK 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,767 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
862
4 guesses
1,201
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
32%
All gray
24%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I C K
B R I S K
F R I S K

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches FRISK in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

FRISK can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

580 answers
305 answers
199 answers
196 answers
126 answers
95 answers
88 answers
87 answers
71 answers
44 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4R1I1S1K5
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing FRISK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FRISK:

24% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
13% chance
Suggested:
TERRA
8% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.3% →
ALONE 5.99 bits
12.8% →
TERRA 5.37 bits
8.3% →
TILDE 5.15 bits
8.2% →
PALET 5.59 bits
5.3% →
ATONE 4.85 bits
4.0% →
OLATE 4.87 bits
3.7% →
POTAE 4.84 bits
3.6% →
HAOLE 5.03 bits
3.0% →
CADET 4.59 bits
1.8% →
SATIN 4.38 bits

Research on FRISK

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

Optimal play

Opening with FRISK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,668 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 #3,339 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FRISK 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).