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

TUSKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtʌs.ki/

Adjective

Having tusks, especially prominent tusks.

Noun

rhubarb, sticks from that vegetable

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 TUSKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TUSKY 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 70.2% of games, misses completely in 29.8%, and leaves about 290 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,106 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 TUSKY 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.

4.12 Entropy (bits)
290 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 28% of evaluated openers
1.83 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TUSKY 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#8,106 Rank among openers
Opening with TUSKY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,106 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
822
4 guesses
1,251
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
15
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
1 vowels
Common:
STU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
29%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

TUSKY can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

708 answers
224 answers
220 answers
178 answers
112 answers
106 answers
89 answers
74 answers
66 answers
51 answers
50 answers
38 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
24 answers
19 answers
19 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1U1S1K5Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing TUSKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TUSKY:

30% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
9% chance
Suggested:
HEART
9% chance
Suggested:
PARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.8%
ARIEL 6.17 bits
9.4%
HEART 5.44 bits
9.3%
PARLE 5.47 bits
7.5%
DROLE 5.12 bits
4.7%
ARIEL 4.78 bits
4.5%
CRONE 5.11 bits
3.7%
RAINE 5.24 bits
3.1%
CARLE 5.16 bits
2.8%
CARLE 4.60 bits
2.1%
ALONE 4.61 bits

Research on TUSKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with TUSKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,483 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with TUSKY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 TUHSKEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TUSKY 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).