GUNKY
Yes, GUNKY was the Wordle answer on March 6, 2026 (Wordle #1721).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ɡʌŋki/
- Adjective
-
greasy, messy or dirty.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Use GUNKY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 81.7% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: March 6, 2026 (#1721).
See the full page for that puzzle: March 6, 2026 (#1721).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How GUNKY performs as a guess
GUNKY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,375 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 60.2% of games, misses completely in 39.8%, and leaves about 435 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,976 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe GUNKY 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How GUNKY 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches GUNKY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
GUNKY can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for GUNKY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing GUNKY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to GUNKY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing GUNKY:
Research on GUNKY
Game-tree analysis and word research for GUNKY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with GUNKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,386 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,698 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
- GUNKY 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.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).