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

PEKOE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpiːkəʊ//ˈpɛːkəʊ//ˈpikoʊ/

Noun

A high-quality black tea made using young leaves, grown in Sri Lanka, India, Java and the Azores.

Alternative forms: pecco

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

Etymology

Unclear; possibly from Hokkien 白毫 (pe̍h-ho, “white hair”) or Hokkien 白花 (pe̍h-hoe, “white flower”). See Tea leaf grading#Etymology. Compare to Russian ба́йховый (bájxovyj).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PEKOE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% 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 PEKOE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PEKOE 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 75.8% of games, misses completely in 24.2%, and leaves about 243 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,302 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 PEKOE 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.

4.17 Entropy (bits)
243 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PEKOE 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,302 Rank among openers
Opening with PEKOE left 3 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,302 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
733
4 guesses
1,266
5 guesses
293
6 guesses
17

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
37%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

PEKOE can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

578 answers
305 answers
222 answers
199 answers
125 answers
100 answers
93 answers
82 answers
78 answers
68 answers
46 answers
46 answers
37 answers
35 answers
31 answers
26 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1K5O1E1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PEKOE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PEKOE:

24% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
13% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
9% chance
Suggested:
ALTER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.2% →
SAINT 6.07 bits
12.8% →
TONAL 4.95 bits
9.3% →
ALTER 5.33 bits
8.3% →
SLART 5.10 bits
5.2% →
SLART 4.92 bits
4.2% →
SLACK 4.95 bits
3.9% →
TALER 4.55 bits
3.4% →
SLATY 5.14 bits
3.3% →
SONAR 4.11 bits
2.9% →
MOWER 3.72 bits

Research on PEKOE

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

Optimal play

Opening with PEKOE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,162 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,374 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
PEKOE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).