KINKY
KINKY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈkɪŋki/
- Adjective
-
Full of kinks; liable to kink or curl.
“kinky hair”
- Adjective
-
Marked by unconventional sexual preferences or behavior, as fetishism, sadomasochism, and other sexual practices.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From kink + -y. Compare Spanish canquiñi (“nappy”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KIHNGKEE.
Related meanings
Synonyms CRISP quirky perverted abnormal CURLY unnatural
Opposites straight normal conventional
Use KINKY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 80.0% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →KINKY in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #401
Reveal this appearance's category
KINKY appeared in STARTS OF BROADWAY MUSICALS (blue group).
How KINKY performs as a guess
KINKY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 59.6% of games, misses completely in 40.4%, and leaves about 477 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,317 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.93 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe KINKY 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How KINKY 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches KINKY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
KINKY can come back 51 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for KINKY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing KINKY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to KINKY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing KINKY:
Research on KINKY
Game-tree analysis and word research for KINKY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with KINKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #14,068 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 4.10 guesses at best and is rank #7,119 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.93; proven optimal play reaches 3.91. 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- KINKY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 12, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 57 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.6 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).