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

YERKS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of yerk

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 YERKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts YERKS 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 168 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,290 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 YERKS 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.

4.50 Entropy (bits)
168 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 52% of evaluated openers
1.44 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How YERKS 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,290 Rank among openers
Opening with YERKS left 1 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 3.77 average. It ranks #10,290 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
796
4 guesses
1,232
5 guesses
257
6 guesses
32
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:
ERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
20%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

YERKS can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

368 answers
284 answers
213 answers
194 answers
162 answers
158 answers
133 answers
95 answers
60 answers
51 answers
47 answers
44 answers
44 answers
40 answers
35 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Y4E1R1K5S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing YERKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing YERKS:

16% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
12% chance
Suggested:
ALINE
9% chance
Suggested:
IRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5%
TONAL 6.00 bits
12.0%
ALINE 5.44 bits
9.0%
IRATE 4.37 bits
8.2%
TRAIN 5.29 bits
6.8%
DAILY 4.56 bits
6.7%
STAIN 5.34 bits
5.6%
SLANT 4.82 bits
4.0%
THALE 4.48 bits
2.5%
SAIST 4.23 bits
2.1%
LATER 3.82 bits

Research on YERKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with YERKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,794 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 #4,725 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77; proven optimal play reaches 3.76. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 YURKS. 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.