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

KOOKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 70.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkuːki//ˈkʊki//ˈkuki/

Adjective

Eccentric, strange, or foolish; crazy or insane; kookish.

“His kooky behavior seemed charming at first, but soon got on our nerves.”

Adjective

Behaving like a kook (a person with poor style or skill); kook-like.

Noun

Alternative form of kookie (“kookaburra”).

Alternative forms: kookie

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 KOOKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KOOKY 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 48.6% of games, misses completely in 51.4%, and leaves about 696 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,803 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.06 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 KOOKY 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.

2.74 Entropy (bits)
696 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
70.7% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KOOKY 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.

4.06 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,803 Rank among openers
Opening with KOOKY left 5 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 4.06 average. It ranks #14,803 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
21
3 guesses
453
4 guesses
1,286
5 guesses
540
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
O

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
49%
Green tile
35%
All gray
51%

Feedback distribution

KOOKY can come back 39 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1220 answers
253 answers
176 answers
160 answers
151 answers
108 answers
53 answers
41 answers
30 answers
29 answers
18 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
1 answer
1 answer

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5O1O1K5Y4
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing KOOKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KOOKY:

51% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
CRUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

51.4%
TIARE 6.19 bits
10.7%
SLART 4.72 bits
7.4%
CRUET 4.95 bits
6.7%
MANOR 5.15 bits
6.4%
SLANT 4.91 bits
4.5%
CARSE 4.97 bits
2.2%
SLADE 3.58 bits
1.7%
PARLE 4.74 bits
1.3%
SLART 3.51 bits
1.2%
SAINE 3.86 bits

Research on KOOKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with KOOKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.04 guesses and ranks #14,777 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.24 guesses at best and is rank #7,424 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.06; proven optimal play reaches 4.04. 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 KOOKEE.

Related meanings

Synonyms nuts cracked bats crackers daft BUGGY

Opposites sane

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KOOKY 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 (3.5 of 5).

In a sentence

Tom's a bit kooky, but he's a good guy.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).