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

SOCKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɒks//sɑːks/

Noun

plural of sock

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of sock

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

Etymology

From socks (“a cat’s paws that are a different colour from the main body”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SAHKS.

Rhymes with ROCKS LOCKS DOCKS MOCKS JOCKS

Related meanings

Synonyms bash bop

In a sentence

He put his socks on.
© tatoeba.org contributor CH (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He put on his socks.
© tatoeba.org contributor CH (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SOCKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 83.0% 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 SOCKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SOCKS 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 63.3% of games, misses completely in 36.7%, and leaves about 404 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,681 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 SOCKS 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.

3.62 Entropy (bits)
404 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SOCKS 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#12,681 Rank among openers
Opening with SOCKS left 5 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 3.83 average. It ranks #12,681 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
24
3 guesses
716
4 guesses
1,267
5 guesses
316
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
32%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

SOCKS can come back 58 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

875 answers
242 answers
202 answers
193 answers
174 answers
128 answers
48 answers
44 answers
44 answers
37 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
28 answers
26 answers
24 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1C3K5S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing SOCKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SOCKS:

37% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
8% chance
Suggested:
LEANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.7% →
RAILE 6.27 bits
10.2% →
TRONE 5.20 bits
8.5% →
LEANT 5.37 bits
8.1% →
TIARE 5.61 bits
7.3% →
RATEL 4.61 bits
5.4% →
TARSE 5.50 bits
2.0% →
PEART 3.90 bits
1.8% →
BLAER 4.60 bits
1.8% →
CRINE 3.85 bits
1.6% →
CARLE 4.05 bits

Research on SOCKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SOCKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,659 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,237 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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
SOCKS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 11 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

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).