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

HIKED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /haɪkt/

Verb

simple past and past participle of hike

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it HYKT.

Rhymes with LIKED BIKED

Related meanings

Synonyms rise RAISE BOOST hiking TRAMP

In a sentence

We hiked around the area.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
How far have we hiked?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HIKED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% 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 HIKED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HIKED 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 79.4% of games, misses completely in 20.6%, and leaves about 216 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,709 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 HIKED 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.

4.36 Entropy (bits)
216 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HIKED 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
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#7,709 Rank among openers
Opening with HIKED 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,709 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
818
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
226
6 guesses
6

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EI

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
27%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

HIKED can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

492 answers
373 answers
198 answers
183 answers
134 answers
88 answers
82 answers
72 answers
71 answers
66 answers
64 answers
40 answers
38 answers
32 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4I1K5E1D2
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing HIKED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HIKED:

21% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.6% →
SOLAR 5.98 bits
15.6% →
SLART 5.85 bits
8.3% →
SLANT 5.61 bits
7.7% →
SOLAR 4.67 bits
5.6% →
COAST 5.24 bits
3.7% →
SAINT 4.49 bits
3.4% →
CLARY 5.03 bits
3.0% →
DEARE 4.82 bits
3.0% →
SALTY 4.35 bits
2.8% →
DOWDY 4.41 bits

Research on HIKED

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

Optimal play

Opening with HIKED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,169 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with HIKED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
HIKED sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.1 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).