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

MAKAI

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

seaward, towards the sea.

Noun

Shorea assamica, a tree of India.

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 MAKAI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MAKAI 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 69.5% of games, misses completely in 30.5%, and leaves about 354 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,550 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.87 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 MAKAI 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.

3.64 Entropy (bits)
354 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 10% of evaluated openers
2.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MAKAI 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.

3.87 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,550 Rank among openers
Opening with MAKAI left 4 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 3.87 average. It ranks #13,550 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
654
4 guesses
1,280
5 guesses
357
6 guesses
28
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AI

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
23%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

MAKAI can come back 58 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

723 answers
418 answers
268 answers
191 answers
93 answers
75 answers
68 answers
60 answers
48 answers
41 answers
40 answers
39 answers
37 answers
37 answers
24 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1K5A1I1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MAKAI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MAKAI:

30% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
18% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
11% chance
Suggested:
STARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.5%
TORSE 6.16 bits
17.6%
TRINE 5.39 bits
11.3%
STARE 5.52 bits
8.0%
TORSE 4.81 bits
3.9%
SERAL 4.63 bits
3.2%
ROUTE 4.99 bits
2.9%
CLOSE 4.94 bits
2.5%
SLANT 4.52 bits
2.0%
SLANE 4.02 bits
1.7%
CRISE 4.30 bits

Research on MAKAI

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

Optimal play

Opening with MAKAI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,365 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 #6,340 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.87, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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

Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it MUHKAY. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MAKAI 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).