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

PEKAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PEKAN Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A fisher cat or fisher (Pekania pennanti, syn. Martes pennanti)

Noun

An American marten (Martes americana).

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 PEKAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PEKAN 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 84.0% of games, misses completely in 16.0%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,852 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___N P in the 1st position and N in the 5th position P__A_ P in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _E__N E in the 2nd position and N in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in PEKAN.

First-turn measures

All four describe PEKAN 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.

4.67 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 63% of evaluated openers
1.27 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PEKAN 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,852 Rank among openers
Opening with PEKAN left 2 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,852 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
825
4 guesses
1,238
5 guesses
207
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
2 vowels
Common:
AEN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
26%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

PEKAN can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

380 answers
315 answers
262 answers
163 answers
125 answers
109 answers
84 answers
68 answers
62 answers
62 answers
55 answers
47 answers
40 answers
35 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1K5A1N1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

MOULT TOILE SLART COUNT DETER SIREE

Strategy after playing PEKAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PEKAN:

16% chance
Suggested:
MOULT
13% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.0% →
MOULT 5.62 bits
13.3% →
TOILE 5.36 bits
11.0% →
SLART 5.20 bits
6.9% →
SLART 4.92 bits
5.3% →
COUNT 5.04 bits
4.6% →
DETER 4.51 bits
3.5% →
SIREE 4.63 bits
2.9% →
GIANT 4.34 bits
2.6% →
CORAL 4.49 bits
2.6% →
SOULY 4.69 bits

Research on PEKAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with PEKAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,592 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,945 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, 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

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

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

Related meanings

Synonyms fisher

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PEKAN 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).