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

SPACK

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A person with cerebral palsy.

Noun

An incompetent or physically uncoordinated person.

“You spilt beer on your shirt, you spack!”

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

Etymology

Possibly a contraction of spastic (as a term of abuse).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SPAK.

Rhymes with BLACK TRACK CRACK STACK SNACK

Use SPACK in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% 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 SPACK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SPACK 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 72.2% of games, misses completely in 27.8%, and leaves about 268 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,228 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 SPACK 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
268 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPACK 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,228 Rank among openers
Opening with SPACK solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,228 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
918
4 guesses
1,182
5 guesses
193
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
32%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

SPACK can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

662 answers
336 answers
135 answers
114 answers
114 answers
108 answers
105 answers
69 answers
56 answers
45 answers
42 answers
41 answers
38 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1P3A1C3K5
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing SPACK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPACK:

28% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
TALER
6% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.8% →
TOILE 6.04 bits
14.1% →
TALER 5.56 bits
5.7% →
TRINE 5.11 bits
4.8% →
PLIER 5.18 bits
4.8% →
RUOTE 5.52 bits
4.5% →
TRIDE 5.05 bits
4.4% →
NOIRE 5.32 bits
2.9% →
TONER 4.60 bits
2.3% →
TUILE 4.51 bits
1.9% →
BLITE 4.31 bits

Research on SPACK

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

Optimal play

Opening with SPACK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,816 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,973 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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
SPACK 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).