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

MUZAK

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative letter-case form of Muzak (“easy listening music, especially if regarded as uninteresting; something regarded as droning on and often boring, or soothing but undemanding”).

Verb

Alternative letter-case form of Muzak.

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

Etymology

The noun is a blend of music + the letters ak from Kodak, a well-known brand in 1934 when the word was coined by the American inventor, scientist, and soldier George Owen Squier (1865–1934), who developed the original technical basis for the service.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it MYOOZAK.

In a sentence

I'd rather stick beans in my ears than listen to your modern muzak.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MUZAK in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 81.5% 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 MUZAK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MUZAK 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 65.1% of games, misses completely in 34.9%, and leaves about 440 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,052 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 MUZAK 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.

3.40 Entropy (bits)
440 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MUZAK 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,052 Rank among openers
Opening with MUZAK left 3 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 3.90 average. It ranks #14,052 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
619
4 guesses
1,268
5 guesses
406
6 guesses
26

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
23%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

MUZAK can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

833 answers
522 answers
174 answers
126 answers
122 answers
73 answers
59 answers
45 answers
44 answers
40 answers
39 answers
37 answers
32 answers
31 answers
23 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3U1Z10A1K5
Total: 20 points

Words With Friends

Total: 22 points

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

Strategy after playing MUZAK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MUZAK:

35% chance
Suggested:
SIREN
22% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.9% →
SIREN 5.99 bits
21.9% →
TARSE 5.55 bits
7.3% →
TRONE 5.39 bits
5.3% →
STIRE 4.69 bits
5.1% →
TALER 4.77 bits
3.1% →
TOILE 5.17 bits
2.5% →
SLIER 4.58 bits
1.9% →
CRISE 4.69 bits
1.8% →
TRONE 4.64 bits
1.7% →
SAULT 4.20 bits

Research on MUZAK

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

Optimal play

Opening with MUZAK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,760 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.03 guesses at best and is rank #6,544 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90; proven optimal play reaches 3.90. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
MUZAK sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).