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

TANKA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A form of Japanese verse in five lines of 5, 7, 5, 7, and 7 morae.

Noun

Alternative form of thangka (“Tibetan religious artwork”).

Alternative forms: taka, tucka

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

Etymology

From Japanese 短歌 (tanka, “short song”), from Middle Chinese 短 (MC twanX) 歌 (MC ka) (compare Mandarin 短歌 (duǎngē) duǎngē).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use TANKA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% 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 TANKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TANKA 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 72.0% of games, misses completely in 28.0%, and leaves about 280 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,129 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 TANKA 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
280 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TANKA 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,129 Rank among openers
Opening with TANKA 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 3.76 average. It ranks #10,129 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
760
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
264
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
27%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

TANKA can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

667 answers
256 answers
256 answers
180 answers
138 answers
101 answers
75 answers
75 answers
66 answers
53 answers
52 answers
50 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1N1K5A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing TANKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TANKA:

28% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
11% chance
Suggested:
PEARL
11% chance
Suggested:
SHIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.0% →
SOLER 5.93 bits
10.7% →
PEARL 5.37 bits
10.7% →
SHIER 5.50 bits
7.6% →
GOIER 5.27 bits
5.8% →
SLYER 4.98 bits
4.2% →
LEAST 5.02 bits
3.1% →
DRICE 4.44 bits
3.1% →
SHOER 4.94 bits
2.8% →
GRISE 4.71 bits
2.2% →
SLICE 4.00 bits

Research on TANKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with TANKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,491 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,632 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
TANKA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).