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

ONKUS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Inferior; unpleasant; unacceptably bad.

Adjective

Good; acceptable; okay.

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

Etymology

Unknown. Australian from 1903, New Zealand from 1909. Compare slightly earlier onky.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use ONKUS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.2% 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 ONKUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ONKUS 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 72.4% of games, misses completely in 27.6%, and leaves about 280 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,038 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 ONKUS 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.

4.06 Entropy (bits)
280 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ONKUS 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
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,038 Rank among openers
Opening with ONKUS solved every answer in the snapshot within 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 #10,038 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
789
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
246
6 guesses
26

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
NOSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
10%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

ONKUS can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

657 answers
283 answers
252 answers
182 answers
149 answers
104 answers
89 answers
66 answers
53 answers
45 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1N1K5U1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing ONKUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ONKUS:

28% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
TALER
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.6% →
TIARE 6.20 bits
11.9% →
TALER 5.35 bits
10.6% →
STALE 5.78 bits
7.6% →
RAILE 5.34 bits
6.2% →
PARLE 5.01 bits
4.4% →
ARIEL 4.44 bits
3.7% →
ROOST 4.64 bits
2.8% →
SAUTE 4.44 bits
2.2% →
CARLE 5.01 bits
1.9% →
STIPE 4.77 bits

Research on ONKUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ONKUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,708 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,375 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 3.78, 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.

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