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

MALIK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with MALIK Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A tribal chieftain in certain areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially among the Pashtuns.

Noun

A tribal chieftain in modern Assyrian society.

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 MALIK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MALIK 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 211 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,846 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

M___K M in the 1st position and K in the 5th position M__I_ M in the 1st position and I in the 4th position _A__K A in the 2nd position and K in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in MALIK.

First-turn measures

All four describe MALIK 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.

4.51 Entropy (bits)
211 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 53% of evaluated openers
1.44 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MALIK 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
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,846 Rank among openers
Opening with MALIK solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,846 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
901
4 guesses
1,174
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
11
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:
AIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
30%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

MALIK can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

535 answers
258 answers
249 answers
156 answers
145 answers
119 answers
67 answers
59 answers
54 answers
44 answers
40 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1L1I1K5
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

TORSE TRINE STARE SOWER RONTE REAST

Strategy after playing MALIK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MALIK:

23% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
10% chance
Suggested:
STARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5% →
TORSE 6.30 bits
10.9% →
TRINE 5.42 bits
10.5% →
STARE 5.71 bits
6.6% →
SOWER 5.05 bits
6.1% →
RONTE 4.82 bits
5.0% →
REAST 4.80 bits
2.8% →
STILE 4.33 bits
2.5% →
HOMER 4.85 bits
2.3% →
TRUCE 4.78 bits
1.9% →
TONER 3.88 bits

Research on MALIK

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

Optimal play

Opening with MALIK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,400 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 #1,994 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 3.71, 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 MALIHK.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MALIK is a kind of leader.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MALIK sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).