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

STIRK

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /stɜːk//stɝk/[stɪrk]

Noun

A yearling cow; a young bullock or heifer.

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

Etymology

From Middle English stirk, sterke, styrke, from Old English stīrc, stȳrc, stȳric, stīorc (“calf, a stirk, a young bullock or a heifer”), from Proto-West Germanic *stiurik, from Proto-Germanic *stiurikaz (“bullock”), diminutive of Proto-Germanic *steuraz (“steer”), equivalent to steer + -ock. Cognate with Middle Low German sterke (“stirk”), Middle Dutch stierick ("stirk"; compare Modern Dutch sterke (“young cow”)), German Sterk, Stärke, Stark (“stirk”). More at steer.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use STIRK in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with STIRK Open Word Finder

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 STIRK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STIRK 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 81.5% of games, misses completely in 18.5%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,971 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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__R_ S in the 1st position and R in the 4th position _T__K T in the 2nd position and K in the 5th position ST_RK S in the 1st position, T in the 2nd position, R in the 4th position, and K in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe STIRK 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.

4.76 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STIRK 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,971 Rank among openers
Opening with STIRK left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #3,971 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
943
4 guesses
1,123
5 guesses
205
6 guesses
21

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IRST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

STIRK can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

442 answers
296 answers
193 answers
144 answers
100 answers
92 answers
89 answers
77 answers
75 answers
66 answers
64 answers
46 answers
40 answers
38 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1I1R1K5
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

ALONE CANOE HAOLE LIANE PLANE TREAT

Strategy after playing STIRK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STIRK:

19% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
12% chance
Suggested:
CANOE
8% chance
Suggested:
HAOLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.5% →
ALONE 6.02 bits
12.4% →
CANOE 5.29 bits
8.1% →
HAOLE 5.34 bits
6.0% →
LIANE 5.05 bits
4.2% →
PLANE 5.14 bits
3.9% →
TREAT 4.72 bits
3.7% →
HAOLE 5.10 bits
3.2% →
TITHE 4.15 bits
3.1% →
ALONE 5.02 bits
2.8% →
DIANE 4.44 bits

Research on STIRK

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

Optimal play

Opening with STIRK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,901 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,463 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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
STIRK 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).