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

WAULK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

to make cloth (especially tweed in Scotland) denser and more felt-like by soaking and beating.

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 WAULK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAULK 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 74.0% of games, misses completely in 26.0%, and leaves about 257 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,799 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 WAULK 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.

4.18 Entropy (bits)
257 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 32% of evaluated openers
1.77 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAULK 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
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,799 Rank among openers
Opening with WAULK solved every answer in the snapshot within 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 #9,799 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
788
4 guesses
1,232
5 guesses
271
6 guesses
18
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:
ALU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
31%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

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

617 answers
298 answers
192 answers
183 answers
157 answers
139 answers
79 answers
60 answers
54 answers
51 answers
42 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1U1L1K5
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing WAULK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAULK:

26% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
13% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
8% chance
Suggested:
SENOR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.0%
TRONE 6.15 bits
12.6%
TRACE 5.63 bits
8.1%
SENOR 5.09 bits
7.7%
RONTE 4.90 bits
6.6%
GOIER 5.06 bits
5.9%
REACT 4.63 bits
3.3%
TRONE 4.74 bits
2.5%
HOISE 4.40 bits
2.3%
SIREN 4.13 bits
2.1%
SNORE 4.68 bits

Research on WAULK

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAULK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,725 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,336 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 3.78, 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

One syllable Say it WAWLK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.