SPUNK
SPUNK is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /spʌŋk/
- Noun
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Touchwood; tinder.
- Noun
-
Courage; spirit; mettle; determination.
- Verb
-
To ejaculate.
“He spunked into the condom.”
- Verb
-
To waste (money etc.).
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
1530, blend of spark + funk (obsolete, “spark”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SPUHNGK.
Rhymes with DRUNK TRUNK CHUNK SKUNK STUNK
Related meanings
Use SPUNK in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 85.7% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →SPUNK in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1173
Reveal this appearance's category
SPUNK appeared in MUSIC GENRE PLUS STARTING LETTER (purple group).
How SPUNK performs as a guess
SPUNK 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 65.8% of games, misses completely in 34.2%, and leaves about 341 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,986 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SPUNK 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SPUNK 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SPUNK in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SPUNK can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SPUNK; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SPUNK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SPUNK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SPUNK:
Research on SPUNK
Game-tree analysis and word research for SPUNK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SPUNK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,193 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #3,005 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
- SPUNK sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
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).