Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

SMOKO

SMOKO is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsməʊkəʊ/

Noun

A cigarette break from work or military duty; a brief cessation of work to have a smoke, or (more generally) to take a small rest, snack etc.

Noun

A tea break or coffee break with cakes, snacks, etc.

Alternative forms: smoke-o, smoke-oh, smokeho

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

Use SMOKO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 81.2% 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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 SMOKO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SMOKO as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 60.5% of games, misses completely in 39.5%, and leaves about 447 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,190 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 SMOKO 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.

3.53 Entropy (bits)
447 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SMOKO 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,190 Rank among openers
Opening with SMOKO left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,190 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
677
4 guesses
1,262
5 guesses
350
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
28%
All gray
40%

Feedback distribution

SMOKO can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

941 answers
245 answers
213 answers
164 answers
142 answers
102 answers
79 answers
54 answers
40 answers
40 answers
36 answers
28 answers
28 answers
26 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1M3O1K5O1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing SMOKO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SMOKO:

39% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
TALER
9% chance
Suggested:
LEANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.5% →
RAILE 6.23 bits
10.3% →
TALER 5.15 bits
8.9% →
LEANT 5.37 bits
6.9% →
TARSE 5.46 bits
6.0% →
RAILE 5.28 bits
4.3% →
LEANT 4.58 bits
3.3% →
CARLE 5.10 bits
2.3% →
LATER 4.28 bits
1.7% →
TRICE 4.20 bits
1.7% →
CARET 3.89 bits

Research on SMOKO

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

Optimal play

Opening with SMOKO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,033 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,936 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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
SMOKO 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).