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

LUCKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /lʌks/

Noun

plural of luck

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of luck

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

Etymology

From the given name Luke.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it LUHKS.

Rhymes with SUCKS BUCKS DUCKS TUCKS RUCKS

Related meanings

Synonyms lot chance circumstances portion fate fortune

Use LUCKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.3% 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 LUCKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LUCKS 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 70.8% of games, misses completely in 29.2%, and leaves about 302 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,203 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 LUCKS 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.

4.07 Entropy (bits)
302 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LUCKS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,203 Rank among openers
Opening with LUCKS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,203 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
858
4 guesses
1,203
5 guesses
227
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
16%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

LUCKS can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

697 answers
287 answers
285 answers
170 answers
103 answers
80 answers
78 answers
54 answers
51 answers
40 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1U1C3K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing LUCKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LUCKS:

29% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
12% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.2% →
ROATE 6.15 bits
12.0% →
RAILE 5.37 bits
12.0% →
TIARE 5.84 bits
7.1% →
TIARE 5.65 bits
4.3% →
TRONE 5.41 bits
3.4% →
THALE 4.82 bits
3.3% →
MORNE 4.35 bits
2.3% →
TIARE 4.65 bits
2.1% →
TRONE 4.31 bits
1.7% →
ALINE 4.41 bits

Research on LUCKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LUCKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,069 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,893 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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
LUCKS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (2.8 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).