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

HAIKU

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhaɪkuː//haɪˈku//ˈhaɪku/

Noun

A Japanese poem in three lines, the first and last consisting of five morae, and the second consisting of seven morae, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

Noun

A three-line poem in any language, with five syllables in the first and last lines and seven syllables in the second, usually with an emphasis on the season or a naturalistic theme.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 俳(はい)句(く) (haiku), from Middle Chinese 俳 (beaj, “paralleled [writing]”) + 句 (kɨoᴴ, “line”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it HYKOO.

In a sentence

A haiku is one type of poem.
© tatoeba.org contributor Source_VOA (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Haiku is a very short poem.
© tatoeba.org contributor ATH (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HAIKU in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% 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.

HAIKU in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How HAIKU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HAIKU 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 81.9% of games, misses completely in 18.1%, and leaves about 206 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,265 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe HAIKU 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.

4.26 Entropy (bits)
206 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAIKU 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,265 Rank among openers
Opening with HAIKU solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,265 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
761
4 guesses
1,236
5 guesses
294
6 guesses
25

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
28%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

HAIKU can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

432 answers
334 answers
243 answers
212 answers
193 answers
137 answers
93 answers
66 answers
64 answers
47 answers
44 answers
43 answers
35 answers
34 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1I1K5U1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing HAIKU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAIKU:

18% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
14% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
10% chance
Suggested:
SOREL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.1% →
SOLER 5.80 bits
14.0% →
ALERT 5.62 bits
10.2% →
SOREL 5.38 bits
8.9% →
RONTE 5.22 bits
8.1% →
SLYER 4.81 bits
5.7% →
TRONE 4.94 bits
3.9% →
TORSE 5.44 bits
2.8% →
TRAIL 4.69 bits
2.7% →
STARE 4.64 bits
2.0% →
CLOTE 3.98 bits

Research on HAIKU

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAIKU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #10,983 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,148 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.

Familiarity and learning

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).