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

TARKA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TARKA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtɑː(ɹ)kə/

Noun

Heated oil or ghee in which spices and onion, etc. are well-stirred and browned.

Alternative forms: tadka

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 TARKA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TARKA 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 76.7% of games, misses completely in 23.3%, and leaves about 226 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,478 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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.

T___A T in the 1st position and A in the 5th position T__K_ T in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _A__A A in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TARKA 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.

4.31 Entropy (bits)
226 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 39% of evaluated openers
1.63 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TARKA 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,478 Rank among openers
Opening with TARKA left 4 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,478 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
797
4 guesses
1,217
5 guesses
269
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ART

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
28%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

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

554 answers
280 answers
221 answers
189 answers
127 answers
112 answers
87 answers
82 answers
72 answers
54 answers
51 answers
49 answers
49 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1R1K5A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

MOILE NOISE HEIST SLANE CRANE SONLY

Strategy after playing TARKA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TARKA:

23% chance
Suggested:
MOILE
12% chance
Suggested:
NOISE
9% chance
Suggested:
HEIST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.3% →
MOILE 5.89 bits
11.8% →
NOISE 5.04 bits
9.3% →
HEIST 5.34 bits
8.0% →
SLANE 5.51 bits
5.3% →
CRANE 4.56 bits
4.7% →
SONLY 4.55 bits
3.7% →
LEAST 4.96 bits
3.5% →
SOUCE 4.92 bits
3.0% →
ROUET 4.46 bits
2.3% →
SINCE 3.88 bits

Research on TARKA

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

Optimal play

Opening with TARKA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,538 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,267 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TAHRKUH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TARKA 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).