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

NUKED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of nuke

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

Related meanings

Synonyms microwave

Use NUKED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.4% 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 NUKED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NUKED 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 77.8% of games, misses completely in 22.2%, and leaves about 229 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,787 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 NUKED 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.

4.31 Entropy (bits)
229 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NUKED 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,787 Rank among openers
Opening with NUKED 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,787 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
831
4 guesses
1,247
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
26%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

NUKED can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

529 answers
381 answers
176 answers
174 answers
99 answers
95 answers
86 answers
77 answers
76 answers
74 answers
55 answers
52 answers
43 answers
38 answers
38 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1U1K5E1D2
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing NUKED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NUKED:

22% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.2% →
ROAST 6.07 bits
16.0% →
SLART 5.94 bits
7.4% →
CAIRN 5.26 bits
7.3% →
SOLAR 4.59 bits
4.2% →
SPURT 5.18 bits
4.0% →
RAINE 4.46 bits
3.6% →
SALTY 4.20 bits
3.2% →
DEARE 4.71 bits
3.2% →
CLARY 4.90 bits
3.1% →
DAILY 4.84 bits

Research on NUKED

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

Optimal play

Opening with NUKED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,358 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 NUKED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
NUKED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); 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).