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

GONKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of gonk

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of gonk

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

Use GONKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% 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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 GONKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GONKS 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 70.3% of games, misses completely in 29.7%, and leaves about 293 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,156 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 GONKS 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.

4.14 Entropy (bits)
293 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GONKS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#8,156 Rank among openers
Opening with GONKS left 2 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 3.72 average. It ranks #8,156 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
841
4 guesses
1,242
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
NOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
25%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

GONKS can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

708 answers
310 answers
172 answers
142 answers
135 answers
72 answers
70 answers
57 answers
54 answers
53 answers
48 answers
47 answers
43 answers
37 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1N1K5S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing GONKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GONKS:

30% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
STARE
7% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.7% →
RAILE 6.24 bits
13.0% →
STARE 5.74 bits
7.2% →
TALER 5.31 bits
6.0% →
TALER 4.63 bits
5.7% →
ARIEL 5.47 bits
3.0% →
CADIE 4.67 bits
2.9% →
RAILE 5.11 bits
2.4% →
PEART 4.30 bits
2.3% →
FLARE 4.31 bits
2.2% →
LAIDE 4.81 bits

Research on GONKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GONKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,579 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,629 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).