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

HICKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HICKS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /hɪks/

Noun

plural of hick

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of hick

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 HICKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HICKS 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 67.5% of games, misses completely in 32.5%, and leaves about 332 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,958 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

H___S H in the 1st position and S in the 5th position H__K_ H in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _I__S I in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HICKS 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
332 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.96 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HICKS 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
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,958 Rank among openers
Opening with HICKS solved every answer in the snapshot within 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 #7,958 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
837
4 guesses
1,240
5 guesses
228
6 guesses
12
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:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
17%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

HICKS can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

772 answers
272 answers
238 answers
121 answers
118 answers
73 answers
72 answers
71 answers
63 answers
48 answers
45 answers
42 answers
42 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
24 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4I1C3K5S1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

ALTER ROATE TRINE DROLE SLATE LEANT

Strategy after playing HICKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HICKS:

33% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
11% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.5% →
ALTER 6.09 bits
11.5% →
ROATE 5.70 bits
10.0% →
TRINE 5.56 bits
5.1% →
ROATE 5.54 bits
5.0% →
DROLE 4.71 bits
3.1% →
SLATE 4.82 bits
3.0% →
LEANT 4.73 bits
3.0% →
ROATE 5.22 bits
2.7% →
ROATE 4.48 bits
2.0% →
CLONE 4.24 bits

Research on HICKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HICKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,127 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,963 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 3.77, 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 HIHKS.

Rhymes with PICKS KICKS TICKS LICKS NICKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HICKS is a kind of rustic.

Synonyms YAHOO rustic provincial

Opposites cosmopolitan

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HICKS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).