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

PATKA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A head covering worn by Sikh boys, and by Sikh men either alone or as an under-turban.

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 PATKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PATKA 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 68.4% of games, misses completely in 31.6%, and leaves about 336 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,992 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 PATKA 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.

3.86 Entropy (bits)
336 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 17% of evaluated openers
2.09 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PATKA 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,992 Rank among openers
Opening with PATKA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after 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 #9,992 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
755
4 guesses
1,277
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 (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
26%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

PATKA can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

751 answers
295 answers
280 answers
157 answers
114 answers
95 answers
70 answers
66 answers
56 answers
47 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1T1K5A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PATKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PATKA:

32% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
12% chance
Suggested:
SHIER
12% chance
Suggested:
LEARN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.6%
RIONE 6.00 bits
12.4%
SHIER 5.65 bits
11.8%
LEARN 5.37 bits
6.6%
SLYER 4.83 bits
4.8%
LEAST 4.93 bits
4.0%
SLIER 5.47 bits
2.9%
NOISE 4.77 bits
2.8%
CRINE 4.95 bits
2.4%
COURE 4.61 bits
2.0%
TRINE 3.85 bits

Research on PATKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with PATKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #10,983 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 PATKA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PATKUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PATKA is a kind of scarf.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PATKA 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.

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).