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

LARKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of lark

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of lark

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 LARKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LARKS 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 146 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,524 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 LARKS 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
146 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 73% of evaluated openers
1.12 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LARKS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,524 Rank among openers
Opening with LARKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,524 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,179
5 guesses
191
6 guesses
15
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
25%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

LARKS can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

367 answers
265 answers
177 answers
174 answers
120 answers
112 answers
109 answers
109 answers
69 answers
66 answers
60 answers
53 answers
46 answers
39 answers
37 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1A1R1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LARKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LARKS:

15% chance
Suggested:
CONTE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
7% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5%
CONTE 5.90 bits
11.2%
TRIED 5.30 bits
7.5%
TOILE 5.19 bits
7.3%
SIENT 5.57 bits
5.1%
TRADE 4.78 bits
4.7%
CONTE 5.26 bits
4.6%
TONEY 4.61 bits
4.6%
ALATE 4.49 bits
2.9%
SHUTE 4.70 bits
2.8%
CONTE 4.67 bits

Research on LARKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LARKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,123 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,448 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 LAHRKS.

Rhymes with MARKS PARKS BARKS HARKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LARKS is a kind of bird or recreation.

Synonyms SPORT

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LARKS 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.

In a sentence

When the sky falls, we will catch the larks.
© tatoeba.org contributor grsmotorgroup (CC BY 2.0 FR)
If the sky fell, many larks would be caught.
© tatoeba.org contributor carlosalberto (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).