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

NEUKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of neuk

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 NEUKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NEUKS 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 81.1% of games, misses completely in 18.9%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,333 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 NEUKS 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.

4.45 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NEUKS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,333 Rank among openers
Opening with NEUKS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,333 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
811
4 guesses
1,231
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
17
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
22%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

NEUKS can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

445 answers
368 answers
174 answers
163 answers
142 answers
137 answers
108 answers
98 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NEUKS:

19% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
7% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.9%
TRAIL 5.97 bits
15.6%
ORATE 5.22 bits
7.4%
SLART 5.25 bits
6.9%
CAIRN 5.17 bits
6.0%
REATE 4.62 bits
5.8%
SLART 5.00 bits
4.6%
BURLY 4.41 bits
4.2%
AINEE 4.51 bits
1.8%
CLOTE 3.99 bits
1.8%
TUBER 3.84 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1E1U1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

The science of NEUKS

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about NEUKS — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with NEUKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses — rank #8,387 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with NEUKS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.75 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it NOOKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.