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

KIRKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kirk

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KURKS.

Rhymes with WORKS TURKS PERKS JERKS LURKS

Use KIRKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.2% 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 KIRKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KIRKS 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 73.2% of games, misses completely in 26.8%, and leaves about 306 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,151 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 KIRKS 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.

3.72 Entropy (bits)
306 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KIRKS 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.75% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,151 Rank among openers
Opening with KIRKS left 6 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,151 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
686
4 guesses
1,261
5 guesses
344
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
20%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

KIRKS can come back 53 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

638 answers
376 answers
281 answers
211 answers
119 answers
105 answers
101 answers
86 answers
80 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5I1R1K5S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing KIRKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KIRKS:

27% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
16% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
12% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.8% →
ALONE 5.98 bits
15.8% →
ORATE 5.17 bits
11.8% →
STALE 5.76 bits
8.9% →
ANILE 5.43 bits
5.0% →
TONEY 4.53 bits
4.4% →
TRIED 4.85 bits
4.2% →
COATE 4.92 bits
3.6% →
SPATE 5.03 bits
3.4% →
LEANT 4.64 bits
1.6% →
DIVER 3.48 bits

Research on KIRKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KIRKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,043 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.01 guesses at best and is rank #6,366 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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
KIRKS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).