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

GAWKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with GAWKS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of gawk

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 GAWKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GAWKS 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 70.2% of games, misses completely in 29.8%, and leaves about 319 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,214 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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.

G___S G in the 1st position and S in the 5th position G__K_ G in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe GAWKS 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.

3.83 Entropy (bits)
319 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 16% of evaluated openers
2.12 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GAWKS 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#11,214 Rank among openers
Opening with GAWKS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,214 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
28
3 guesses
723
4 guesses
1,334
5 guesses
255
6 guesses
14
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:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
22%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

GAWKS can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

708 answers
317 answers
270 answers
188 answers
119 answers
99 answers
68 answers
58 answers
57 answers
52 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
30 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2A1W4K5S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

TOILE ALERT ROUET RONTE STALE NOIRE

Strategy after playing GAWKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GAWKS:

30% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
13% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
11% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.8% →
TOILE 5.98 bits
13.4% →
ALERT 5.62 bits
11.4% →
ROUET 5.55 bits
7.9% →
RONTE 4.81 bits
5.0% →
STALE 4.92 bits
4.2% →
NOIRE 5.00 bits
2.9% →
RONTE 5.03 bits
2.4% →
DROLE 5.09 bits
2.4% →
STILE 4.07 bits
2.2% →
CLINE 4.69 bits

Research on GAWKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GAWKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,119 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,738 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 GAWZK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GAWKS is a kind of actor or look.

Synonyms lump goon

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GAWKS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).