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

HUSKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /hʌsks/

Noun

plural of husk

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of husk

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it HUHSKS.

Rhymes with TUSKS

Related meanings

Synonyms SHELL STRAW STALK

In a sentence

It's a hassle to take the husks off of chestnuts.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Everywhere lay bottles, seed husks, and other litter.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HUSKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 76.6% 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 HUSKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HUSKS 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 54.8% of games, misses completely in 45.2%, and leaves about 557 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,688 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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 HUSKS 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.

3.24 Entropy (bits)
557 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
76.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HUSKS 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,688 Rank among openers
Opening with HUSKS 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 3.88 average. It ranks #13,688 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
632
4 guesses
1,300
5 guesses
354
6 guesses
32

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
55%
Green tile
16%
All gray
45%

Feedback distribution

HUSKS can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1078 answers
283 answers
164 answers
155 answers
118 answers
77 answers
69 answers
53 answers
49 answers
42 answers
34 answers
27 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4U1S1K5S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing HUSKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HUSKS:

45% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRICE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

45.2% →
ARIEL 6.15 bits
11.9% →
TIARE 5.63 bits
6.9% →
TRICE 5.67 bits
6.5% →
TRONE 5.41 bits
4.9% →
BALER 4.48 bits
3.2% →
CARLE 5.04 bits
2.9% →
SLATE 4.73 bits
2.2% →
SAUNT 4.18 bits
2.1% →
LEARY 4.74 bits
1.8% →
TRINE 4.32 bits

Research on HUSKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HUSKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #14,038 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.05 guesses at best and is rank #6,774 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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
HUSKS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than 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 (3.9 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).