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

HOKKU

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

As an opener, it rules out about 79.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Synonym of haiku (“type of Japanese poem”).

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 HOKKU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOKKU 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 59.6% of games, misses completely in 40.4%, and leaves about 494 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,579 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.97 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HOKKU 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.

3.14 Entropy (bits)
494 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 2% of evaluated openers
2.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOKKU 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.

3.97 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,579 Rank among openers
Opening with HOKKU left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.97 average. It ranks #14,579 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
23
3 guesses
558
4 guesses
1,287
5 guesses
442
6 guesses
43
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
17%
All gray
40%

Feedback distribution

HOKKU can come back 42 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

960 answers
290 answers
283 answers
192 answers
184 answers
77 answers
41 answers
38 answers
38 answers
35 answers
34 answers
26 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1K5K5U1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing HOKKU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOKKU:

40% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
12% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
12% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

40.4%
RAILE 6.17 bits
12.2%
SLANE 5.10 bits
11.9%
ARSON 5.23 bits
8.1%
TALER 4.63 bits
7.8%
CRATE 5.64 bits
3.2%
CARSE 5.00 bits
1.7%
CARET 4.00 bits
1.6%
STURE 3.90 bits
1.6%
TARSE 4.60 bits
1.5%
PARTE 4.55 bits

Research on HOKKU

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOKKU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.96 guesses and ranks #14,501 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.11 guesses at best and is rank #7,171 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.97; proven optimal play reaches 3.96. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it HAHKOO. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOKKU 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).