WHELK
WHELK is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /wɛlk//hwɛlkʍɛlk/
- Noun
-
Certain edible sea snails, especially, any one of numerous species of large marine gastropods belonging to Buccinidae, much used as food in Europe.
- Noun
-
A stripe or mark; a ridge; a wale.
Alternative forms: welk, whilk, wilk
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
Not used yetNo past answer date found.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How WHELK performs as a guess
Wordle accepts WHELK 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 75.7% of games, misses completely in 24.3%, and leaves about 291 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,942 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe WHELK 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How WHELK 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
WHELK can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for WHELK; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing WHELK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WHELK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WHELK:
Research on WHELK
Game-tree analysis and word research for WHELK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WHELK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,386 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #4,987 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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 WEHLK. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, WHELK is a kind of seafood or shellfish.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- WHELK 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).