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

MUCKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of muck

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of muck

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 MUCKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MUCKS 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 63.0% of games, misses completely in 37.0%, and leaves about 409 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,925 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 MUCKS 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.

3.74 Entropy (bits)
409 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.21 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MUCKS 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,925 Rank among openers
Opening with MUCKS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,925 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
795
4 guesses
1,222
5 guesses
279
6 guesses
16
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
1 vowels
Common:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
17%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

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

879 answers
335 answers
191 answers
118 answers
91 answers
87 answers
64 answers
55 answers
46 answers
45 answers
38 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3U1C3K5S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing MUCKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MUCKS:

37% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
14% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
TIARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

37.0%
ARIEL 6.19 bits
14.1%
TIARE 5.71 bits
8.0%
TIARE 5.57 bits
5.0%
TRONE 5.38 bits
3.8%
ANOLE 5.22 bits
3.7%
TALER 4.67 bits
2.7%
NOIRE 4.78 bits
2.3%
SHUNT 4.39 bits
1.9%
BLAER 4.66 bits
1.9%
SPORE 4.61 bits

Research on MUCKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MUCKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,203 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,871 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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

One syllable Say it MUHKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MUCKS is a kind of matter or stool.

Synonyms mud goo SLIME dung sludge manure

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MUCKS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 of 5).

In a sentence

Tom mucks out the stable almost every day.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The horses watch Heather's every move when she mucks out their stalls.
© tatoeba.org contributor casaniere (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).