SHARK
SHARK is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ʃɑːk//ʃɑɹk/
- Noun
-
Any predatory fish of the superorder Selachimorpha, with a cartilaginous skeleton and 5 to 7 gill slits on each side of its head.
- Noun
-
Meat of this animal, consumed as food.
- Verb
-
Of a university student who is not a fresher (first-year undergraduate), and especially towards the start of the academic year:
- Verb
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To fish for sharks.
Alternative forms: sharke
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English shark (used by Thomas Beckington in 1442 to refer to a kind of fish), of uncertain origin. Most likely from a semantic extension of the German-derived shark (“scoundrel”), see below. The fish was originally called a dogfish or haye in English and Middle English. Its name in Old English is unknown, although some uses of the word hranfisċ that do not appear to carry the sense of "whale" may have been referencing it.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SHAHRK.
In a sentence
It might be a shark.
What if I see a shark?
Use SHARK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% 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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
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 →SHARK in Connections
2 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #187
Reveal this appearance's category
SHARK appeared in SWINDLER (purple group).
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· Puzzle #58
Reveal this appearance's category
SHARK appeared in FISH (green group).
How SHARK performs as a guess
SHARK is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 185 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,740 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 SHARK 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 SHARK 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SHARK in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SHARK can come back 98 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 SHARK; 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 SHARK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SHARK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SHARK:
Research on SHARK
Game-tree analysis and word research for SHARK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SHARK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,400 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,343 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SHARK sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 13 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 97 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).