SHUCK
Yes, SHUCK was the Wordle answer on May 23, 2025 (Wordle #1434).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ʃʌk//ʃʊk/
- Noun
-
The shell or husk, especially of grains (e.g. corn/maize) or nuts (e.g. walnuts).
- Noun
-
A fraud; a scam.
- Verb
-
To remove the shuck from (walnuts, oysters, etc.).
“Shall we shuck walnuts?”
- Verb
-
To remove (any outer covering).
“I will shuck my clothes and dive naked into the pool.”
Alternative forms: shock
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Origin unknown. Possibly a dialectal survival of unrecorded Middle English *schulk(e), *schullok (“small shell”); either from Old English *sċylluc, *sċylloc, diminutive of Old English sċyll (“shell”), or alternatively created in Middle English from Middle English schulle, schelle (“shell, husk, pod”) + -ok, making it equivalent to shell + -ock (diminutive suffix) or shell + -k (diminutive suffix).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SHUHK.
Rhymes with STUCK TRUCK CHUCK SNUCK PLUCK
Related meanings
In a sentence
Let me shuck the oysters.
The fish market will shuck the oysters for you.
Use SHUCK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 83.4% 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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: May 23, 2025 (#1434).
See the full page for that puzzle: May 23, 2025 (#1434).
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 →SHUCK in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #935
Reveal this appearance's category
SHUCK appeared in REMOVE THE COVERING FROM (green group).
How SHUCK performs as a guess
SHUCK 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 62.2% of games, misses completely in 37.8%, and leaves about 395 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,939 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SHUCK 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 SHUCK 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 SHUCK in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SHUCK can come back 90 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 SHUCK; 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 SHUCK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SHUCK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SHUCK:
Research on SHUCK
Game-tree analysis and word research for SHUCK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SHUCK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #8,998 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,081 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 3.77, 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
- SHUCK 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); 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).