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

SLUNK

SLUNK is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /slʌŋk/

Noun

An animal, especially a calf, born prematurely or abortively.

Verb

simple past and past participle of slink

Noun

A slough, a low, wet, miry place. (Compare slank.)

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

Etymology

Compare slank (“low place, especially one which fills with water”), dialectal slonk (“depression, hollow, slough”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

When she yelled at the dog, it slunk away home.
© tatoeba.org contributor mccarras (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The ferret slunk between the bars of the gate.
© tatoeba.org contributor hecko (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SLUNK in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.9% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 SLUNK performs as a guess

SLUNK 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 73.5% of games, misses completely in 26.5%, and leaves about 242 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,116 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe SLUNK 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.

4.46 Entropy (bits)
242 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
89.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLUNK 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,116 Rank among openers
Opening with SLUNK left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,116 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
932
4 guesses
1,127
5 guesses
225
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LNSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
33%
All gray
26%

Example solver route

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

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SLUNK in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SLUNK can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

631 answers
250 answers
188 answers
135 answers
134 answers
113 answers
81 answers
76 answers
51 answers
47 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
34 answers
30 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1U1N1K5
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing SLUNK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLUNK:

26% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
10% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
CANER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.5% →
ORATE 6.16 bits
10.5% →
RAILE 5.37 bits
7.9% →
CANER 5.20 bits
5.7% →
TRAPE 5.57 bits
5.6% →
PARTE 5.60 bits
4.7% →
PORTE 4.78 bits
3.4% →
TIARE 4.82 bits
3.2% →
IRATE 4.99 bits
2.1% →
THALE 4.51 bits
2.0% →
TRACE 4.83 bits

Research on SLUNK

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLUNK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,448 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 SLUNK can 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
SLUNK 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).