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

MAKIS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of maki

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 MAKIS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MAKIS 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 79.1% of games, misses completely in 20.9%, and leaves about 210 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,986 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 MAKIS 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.

4.35 Entropy (bits)
210 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 42% of evaluated openers
1.60 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MAKIS 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,986 Rank among openers
Opening with MAKIS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #8,986 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
820
4 guesses
1,209
5 guesses
260
6 guesses
19
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:
AIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
24%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

MAKIS can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

495 answers
270 answers
260 answers
208 answers
163 answers
108 answers
77 answers
66 answers
62 answers
49 answers
46 answers
43 answers
42 answers
38 answers
34 answers
31 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1K5I1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MAKIS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MAKIS:

21% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
11% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
11% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.9%
TRONE 5.93 bits
11.4%
ALERT 5.61 bits
11.0%
TRINE 5.39 bits
8.8%
PORTE 5.52 bits
6.9%
RONTE 4.77 bits
4.5%
STALE 4.92 bits
3.2%
SHINE 4.63 bits
2.8%
CLOTE 4.75 bits
2.6%
ROUTE 4.87 bits
2.1%
SLOPE 3.95 bits

Research on MAKIS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MAKIS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,646 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,257 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 first syllable Say it MAKIHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MAKIS 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.

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).