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

REEKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of reek

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of reek

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 REEKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts REEKS 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 224 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,411 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 REEKS 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
224 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 41% of evaluated openers
1.61 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How REEKS 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,411 Rank among openers
Opening with REEKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,411 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
778
4 guesses
1,225
5 guesses
286
6 guesses
20
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:
ERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
24%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

REEKS can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

533 answers
264 answers
247 answers
218 answers
181 answers
96 answers
83 answers
69 answers
42 answers
40 answers
36 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1E1E1K5S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing REEKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing REEKS:

22% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
11% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
10% chance
Suggested:
ANILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5%
TONAL 5.82 bits
11.1%
TRAIL 5.07 bits
10.4%
ANILE 5.48 bits
9.2%
SLANT 5.30 bits
7.6%
TOILE 4.40 bits
4.0%
SLANT 4.55 bits
3.5%
DEALT 4.58 bits
2.9%
STRAP 4.64 bits
1.8%
CAULK 4.45 bits
1.7%
SHAPE 4.03 bits

Research on REEKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with REEKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,536 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 #5,259 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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

One syllable Say it REEKS.

Rhymes with WEEKS SEEKS LEAKS PEAKS GEEKS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, REEKS is a kind of smell or show.

Synonyms SMELL SMACK STINK stench

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
REEKS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with smell (4.1 of 5).

In a sentence

The fish reeks, it's gone bad.
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)
His breath reeks of alcohol.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).