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

LEAKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /liːks/

Noun

plural of leak

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of leak

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 LEAKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LEAKS 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 86.4% of games, misses completely in 13.6%, and leaves about 133 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,545 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 LEAKS 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.

5.00 Entropy (bits)
133 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 83% of evaluated openers
0.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LEAKS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#5,545 Rank among openers
Opening with LEAKS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,545 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
839
4 guesses
1,248
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
13
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
2 vowels
Common:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
27%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

LEAKS can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

324 answers
275 answers
197 answers
133 answers
114 answers
107 answers
99 answers
98 answers
86 answers
81 answers
56 answers
49 answers
43 answers
40 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1E1A1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LEAKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LEAKS:

14% chance
Suggested:
DROIT
12% chance
Suggested:
TRODE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.6%
DROIT 5.71 bits
11.6%
TRODE 5.27 bits
8.3%
RAINY 4.90 bits
5.6%
SNOUT 5.12 bits
4.8%
GUILD 4.80 bits
4.5%
TONER 4.71 bits
4.2%
RONTE 4.49 bits
4.1%
TARGE 4.60 bits
3.6%
ATOLL 4.39 bits
3.4%
ELITE 4.35 bits

Research on LEAKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LEAKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,868 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #2,002 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 LEEKS.

Rhymes with WEEKS SEEKS PEAKS GEEKS REEKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LEAKS is a kind of hole or disease.

Synonyms escape leakage outflow

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LEAKS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 8 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

In a sentence

There are leaks in the roof.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
There were leaks in the roof.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (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).