Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

SLINK

SLINK is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /slɪŋk/

Verb

To sneak about furtively.

Verb

To give birth to an animal prematurely.

“a cow that slinks her calf”

Noun

A furtive sneaking motion.

Noun

The young of an animal when born prematurely, especially a calf.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 SLINK performs as a guess

SLINK 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 76.4% of games, misses completely in 23.6%, and leaves about 201 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,154 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 SLINK 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.

4.67 Entropy (bits)
201 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 63% of evaluated openers
1.28 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLINK 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,154 Rank among openers
Opening with SLINK 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 3.62 average. It ranks #2,154 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
1,001
4 guesses
1,092
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
17
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ILNS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
36%
All gray
24%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
S L I C K
S L I N K

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SLINK in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SLINK can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

561 answers
211 answers
151 answers
139 answers
138 answers
136 answers
82 answers
76 answers
75 answers
67 answers
65 answers
40 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1I1N1K5
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing SLINK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLINK:

24% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
9% chance
Suggested:
OATER
6% chance
Suggested:
CADET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.6%
ROATE 6.24 bits
8.9%
OATER 5.23 bits
6.4%
CADET 5.27 bits
5.9%
URATE 5.52 bits
5.8%
OATER 5.34 bits
5.7%
PARTE 5.57 bits
3.5%
URATE 4.71 bits
3.2%
CONTE 4.50 bits
3.2%
CRATE 4.88 bits
2.8%
LIBEL 4.23 bits

Research on SLINK

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLINK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,266 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,675 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 SLIHNGK. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SLINK is a kind of walk.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SLINK 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.

In a sentence

He was trying to slink into the house.
© tatoeba.org contributor Ullalia (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).