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

KICKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 78.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with KICKY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkɪkiː/

Adjective

Lively, exciting, thrilling.

Adjective

Characterised by kicking motions.

“a kicky dance routine”

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 KICKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KICKY 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 58.8% of games, misses completely in 41.2%, and leaves about 504 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,553 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.96 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.

K___Y K in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position K__K_ K in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _I__Y I in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe KICKY 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)
504 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
78.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 2% of evaluated openers
2.80 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KICKY 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.

3.96 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,553 Rank among openers
Opening with KICKY left 2 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 3.96 average. It ranks #14,553 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
25
3 guesses
548
4 guesses
1,316
5 guesses
414
6 guesses
49
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:
I

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
26%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

KICKY can come back 46 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

977 answers
317 answers
246 answers
220 answers
130 answers
66 answers
50 answers
47 answers
40 answers
38 answers
31 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
13 answers
12 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5I1C3K5Y4
Total: 18 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Try next

TARSE TRINE AROSE ROATE RONTE CLONE

Strategy after playing KICKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KICKY:

41% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
13% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
10% chance
Suggested:
AROSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

41.2% →
TARSE 6.31 bits
13.4% →
TRINE 5.46 bits
10.4% →
AROSE 4.68 bits
9.3% →
ROATE 5.65 bits
5.5% →
RONTE 4.89 bits
2.8% →
CLONE 4.30 bits
2.1% →
SLANT 4.85 bits
2.0% →
ALOSE 3.95 bits
1.7% →
SLANT 3.04 bits
1.6% →
PALER 4.71 bits

Research on KICKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with KICKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.93 guesses and ranks #14,291 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 #7,167 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.96; proven optimal play reaches 3.93. 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 KIHKEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KICKY 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).