SKUNK
Yes, SKUNK was the Wordle answer on October 11, 2023 (Wordle #844).
As an opener, it rules out about 80.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /skʌŋk/
- Noun
-
Any of various small mammals, of most genera of the family Mephitidae, native to North and Central America, having a glossy black coat with white markings and two musk glands at the base of the tail for emitting a noxious smell as a defensive measure.
- Noun
-
A walkover victory in sports or board games, as when the opposing side is unable to score.
- Verb
-
To defeat so badly as to prevent any opposing points.
“I skunked him at cards.”
- Verb
-
To win by thirty or more points.
Alternative forms: scunck
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
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: October 11, 2023 (#844).
See the full page for that puzzle: October 11, 2023 (#844).
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 SKUNK performs as a guess
SKUNK is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 59.6% of games, misses completely in 40.4%, and leaves about 460 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,991 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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 SKUNK 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 SKUNK 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 SKUNK in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SKUNK can come back 56 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 SKUNK; 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 SKUNK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SKUNK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SKUNK:
Research on SKUNK
Game-tree analysis and word research for SKUNK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SKUNK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,628 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SKUNK can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SKUNK is a kind of actor or defeat.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SKUNK sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 86 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
In a sentence
The skunk lives under the house.
He was drunk as a skunk.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).