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

MAUKA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

inland, towards the mountains.

Noun

The flowering Andean root vegetable Mirabilis expansa, which was important to the Incas and which survives in cold, windy places several thousand meters above sea level.

Noun

One of the edible tuberous roots this plant produces.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Hawaiian mauka (“landward, shoreward (from the sea), towards the inland”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use MAUKA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 82.8% 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 MAUKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MAUKA 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 64.4% of games, misses completely in 35.6%, and leaves about 411 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,323 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 MAUKA 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.

3.58 Entropy (bits)
411 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MAUKA 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,323 Rank among openers
Opening with MAUKA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,323 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
658
4 guesses
1,258
5 guesses
370
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
26%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

MAUKA can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

849 answers
377 answers
209 answers
204 answers
98 answers
74 answers
65 answers
48 answers
47 answers
44 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1U1K5A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing MAUKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MAUKA:

36% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
16% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
TORSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.6% →
TOILE 5.92 bits
15.8% →
SLATE 5.57 bits
8.8% →
TORSE 4.84 bits
8.6% →
STIRE 5.07 bits
4.1% →
TRONE 4.80 bits
3.1% →
TOILE 5.21 bits
2.7% →
CRISE 5.00 bits
2.0% →
SPIRE 4.57 bits
2.0% →
SLANT 4.35 bits
1.8% →
TRONE 4.64 bits

Research on MAUKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with MAUKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,321 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.02 guesses at best and is rank #6,421 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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
MAUKA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).