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

KICKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kɪks/

Noun

plural of kick

Noun

Shoes.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of kick

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 KICKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KICKS 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 62.6% of games, misses completely in 37.4%, and leaves about 444 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,441 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.87 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 KICKS 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.

3.32 Entropy (bits)
444 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 4% of evaluated openers
2.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KICKS 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.

3.87 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#13,441 Rank among openers
Opening with KICKS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.87 average. It ranks #13,441 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
26
3 guesses
632
4 guesses
1,350
5 guesses
319
6 guesses
24
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
1 vowels
Common:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
15%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

KICKS can come back 49 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

888 answers
351 answers
258 answers
189 answers
140 answers
84 answers
61 answers
49 answers
35 answers
33 answers
29 answers
29 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5I1C3K5S1
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing KICKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KICKS:

37% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
15% chance
Suggested:
STARE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

37.4%
ROATE 6.10 bits
14.8%
STARE 5.72 bits
10.9%
TRINE 5.60 bits
8.0%
ROATE 5.64 bits
5.9%
RONTE 4.72 bits
3.5%
STILE 4.57 bits
2.6%
CLONE 4.31 bits
2.1%
CARLE 4.75 bits
1.5%
CHARE 4.09 bits
1.4%
LATER 4.35 bits

Research on KICKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KICKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,760 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.04 guesses at best and is rank #6,626 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.87, at or below the proven-optimal 3.90, 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 KIHKS.

Rhymes with PICKS HICKS TICKS LICKS NICKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, KICKS is a kind of blow or excitement.

Synonyms charge BITCH rush PLAIN bang beef

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KICKS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 12 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

We did that just for kicks.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
We just did it for kicks.
© tatoeba.org contributor jvlopes91 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).