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

MARKA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A member of a Mande people of northwest Mali.

Proper noun

The Manding language of these people.

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 MARKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MARKA 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 70.4% of games, misses completely in 29.6%, and leaves about 316 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,065 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 MARKA 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.

3.90 Entropy (bits)
316 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 18% of evaluated openers
2.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MARKA 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,065 Rank among openers
Opening with MARKA left 2 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,065 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
741
4 guesses
1,237
5 guesses
304
6 guesses
18
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
2 vowels
Common:
AR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
26%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

MARKA can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

703 answers
343 answers
243 answers
156 answers
154 answers
99 answers
79 answers
59 answers
53 answers
42 answers
39 answers
33 answers
30 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1R1K5A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MARKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MARKA:

30% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.6%
TOILE 6.11 bits
14.4%
TOISE 5.33 bits
10.2%
SLATE 5.71 bits
6.6%
SCOTE 4.57 bits
6.5%
TRADE 4.68 bits
4.2%
TOUSE 4.92 bits
3.3%
TOILE 5.18 bits
2.5%
CLINE 4.89 bits
2.2%
STILE 3.67 bits
1.8%
SUITE 4.34 bits

Research on MARKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with MARKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,049 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,504 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 MAHRKUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MARKA 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).