Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

STOKE

STOKE is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.

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.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How STOKE performs as a guess

STOKE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

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.

4.95 Entropy (bits)
135 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 81% of evaluated openers
1.00 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,160 Rank among openers
Opening with STOKE 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 3.72 average. It ranks #8,160 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
816
4 guesses
1,217
5 guesses
243
6 guesses
19
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
38%
All gray
13%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L A N K
S T O K E

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:

318 answers
273 answers
179 answers
169 answers
158 answers
123 answers
80 answers
74 answers
73 answers
65 answers
63 answers
46 answers
44 answers
41 answers
39 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1O1K5E1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

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:

13% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY
11% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
8% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.4%
LAIRY 5.76 bits
11.5%
ARIEL 5.20 bits
7.5%
LAIRY 4.89 bits
7.1%
RAILE 4.46 bits
6.7%
TAINT 5.34 bits
5.2%
HEART 4.70 bits
3.4%
CLARY 4.73 bits
3.1%
DROOL 4.21 bits
3.1%
ROANY 4.06 bits
2.7%
CRASS 4.57 bits

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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it STOHK.

Rhymes with BROKE SMOKE SPOKE CHOKE CLOAK

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, STOKE is a kind of tend.

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).

In a sentence

I asked Tom to stoke the fire.
© tatoeba.org contributor Ergulis (CC BY 2.0 FR)
We want our cold nights in Stoke.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).