5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer B tier for first-turn info

SNOEK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SNOEK Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An edible fish, Thyrsites atun, native to South African (Cape), South American and Australian waters, often smoked or salted.

Noun

The queen mackerel, Scomberomorus lineolatus.

Alternative forms: snook

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

No

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

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 SNOEK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SNOEK 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 85.6% of games, misses completely in 14.4%, and leaves about 148 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,609 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

S___K S in the 1st position and K in the 5th position S__E_ S in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _N__K N in the 2nd position and K in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in SNOEK.

First-turn measures

All four describe SNOEK 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.

4.91 Entropy (bits)
148 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 79% of evaluated openers
1.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SNOEK 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,609 Rank among openers
Opening with SNOEK solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,609 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
854
4 guesses
1,186
5 guesses
234
6 guesses
16
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
2 vowels
Common:
ENOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
40%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

SNOEK can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

341 answers
337 answers
178 answers
149 answers
123 answers
98 answers
86 answers
77 answers
68 answers
68 answers
64 answers
62 answers
44 answers
37 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1N1O1E1K5
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TRAIL REATE MOLAR ALTER RAINY SHALT

Strategy after playing SNOEK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SNOEK:

14% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
14% chance
Suggested:
REATE
7% chance
Suggested:
MOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.4% →
TRAIL 5.97 bits
14.2% →
REATE 5.59 bits
7.5% →
MOLAR 5.07 bits
6.3% →
ALTER 4.32 bits
5.2% →
RAINY 4.90 bits
4.1% →
SHALT 4.70 bits
3.6% →
TRASH 4.74 bits
3.2% →
DROOL 4.27 bits
2.9% →
GEARE 4.59 bits
2.9% →
TONIC 4.14 bits

Research on SNOEK

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

Optimal play

Opening with SNOEK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,368 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,195 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70; proven optimal play reaches 3.68. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 SNOHK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SNOEK is a kind of fish.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SNOEK 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); 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).