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

RUCKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of ruck

Noun

plural of ruck

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it RUHKS.

Rhymes with SUCKS BUCKS DUCKS TUCKS LUCKS

Related meanings

Synonyms herd

Use RUCKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.9% 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 RUCKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RUCKS 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 75.3% of games, misses completely in 24.7%, and leaves about 264 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,878 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 RUCKS 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.

4.18 Entropy (bits)
264 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RUCKS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,878 Rank among openers
Opening with RUCKS 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,878 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
861
4 guesses
1,191
5 guesses
241
6 guesses
19

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
RSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
17%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

RUCKS can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

589 answers
383 answers
268 answers
138 answers
96 answers
95 answers
76 answers
74 answers
66 answers
46 answers
41 answers
37 answers
31 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1U1C3K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing RUCKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RUCKS:

25% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
16% chance
Suggested:
IRATE
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.7% →
TOILE 6.13 bits
16.1% →
IRATE 5.36 bits
11.2% →
STALE 5.77 bits
5.8% →
NAICE 5.32 bits
4.0% →
STOAE 5.20 bits
4.0% →
ATONE 4.92 bits
3.2% →
PALET 4.23 bits
3.1% →
COATE 4.86 bits
2.8% →
LAIDE 4.46 bits
1.9% →
SLANT 4.39 bits

Research on RUCKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with RUCKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,052 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 #2,851 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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
RUCKS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).