PLONK
PLONK is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /plɒŋk//plɑŋk/
- Interjection
-
The sound made by something solid landing.
- Interjection
-
The supposed sound of adding a user to one's kill file.
- Noun
-
The sound of something solid landing.
“I just heard a plonk – did something fall down in the kitchen?”
- Verb
-
To set or toss (something) down carelessly.
“When you’ve finished with the sponge, just plonk it back in the sink.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From WWI military slang, derived by alteration of French vin blanc (“white wine”) by the law of Hobson-Jobson. Recorded earliest in the playful rhyming slang form plinketty-plonk. Possibly influenced by the sound of wine being poured into a glass.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
Related meanings
In a sentence
Just plonk yourself down in this comfy chair and sit awhile.
This plonk is surprisingly gluggable.
Use PLONK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.5% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How PLONK performs as a guess
Wordle accepts PLONK 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 73.0% of games, misses completely in 27.0%, and leaves about 251 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,867 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PLONK 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PLONK 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
PLONK can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PLONK; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PLONK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PLONK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PLONK:
Research on PLONK
Game-tree analysis and word research for PLONK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PLONK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,702 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,693 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
- PLONK 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.
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).