STOKE
Yes, STOKE was the Wordle answer on September 22, 2026 (Wordle #1921).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /stəʊk//stoʊk//stəʉk/
- Noun
-
An act of poking, piercing, thrusting
- Verb
-
To feed, stir up, especially, a fire or furnace.
- Verb
-
To encourage a behavior or emotion.
- Noun
-
Misconstruction of stokes, a unit of kinematic viscosity.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English stoken, from Middle Dutch stoken (“to poke, thrust”) or Middle Low German stoken (“to poke, thrust”), from Old Dutch *stokon or Old Saxon *stokon, both from Proto-West Germanic *stokōn, from Proto-Germanic *stukōną (“to be stiff, push”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tewg- (“to push, beat”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it STOHK.
Rhymes with BROKE SMOKE SPOKE CHOKE CLOAK
In a sentence
I asked Tom to stoke the fire.
We want our cold nights in Stoke.
Use STOKE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% 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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: September 22, 2026 (#1921).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 22, 2026 (#1921).
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 →How STOKE performs as a guess
STOKE 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 86.6% of games, misses completely in 13.4%, and leaves about 135 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,160 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 STOKE 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 STOKE 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 STOKE in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
STOKE can come back 94 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 STOKE; 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 STOKE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to STOKE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing STOKE:
Research on STOKE
Game-tree analysis and word research for STOKE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with STOKE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,138 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 #2,240 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.72; proven optimal play reaches 3.69. 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- STOKE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 5 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.7 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).