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

NORKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of nork

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 NORKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NORKS 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 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,550 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 NORKS 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
188 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NORKS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,550 Rank among openers
Opening with NORKS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,550 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
875
4 guesses
1,216
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
19
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:
NORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
22%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

NORKS can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

462 answers
295 answers
227 answers
183 answers
107 answers
96 answers
89 answers
70 answers
63 answers
58 answers
56 answers
55 answers
42 answers
39 answers
37 answers
34 answers
32 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1O1R1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing NORKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NORKS:

19% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
12% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
10% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.5%
DEALT 6.18 bits
12.4%
ARIEL 5.17 bits
9.6%
SLATE 5.83 bits
7.7%
LIANE 5.29 bits
4.5%
THALE 4.44 bits
4.0%
BLATE 4.97 bits
3.7%
PATER 4.31 bits
2.9%
CADET 4.72 bits
2.7%
SPATE 4.90 bits
2.4%
IRADE 4.58 bits

Research on NORKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NORKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,505 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,333 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 NAWRKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NORKS 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.

In a sentence

The Orcs and the Norks are said to be joining forces.
© tatoeba.org contributor morbrorper (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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).