YIKES
YIKES is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
As an opener, it rules out about 92.8% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /jaɪks/
- Interjection
-
Expression of shock and alarm.
“Yikes! A monster!”
- Interjection
-
Expression of empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances.
“John has lost his job and can't pay his mortgage; yikes!”
Alternative forms: yipes
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 YIKES performs as a guess
Wordle accepts YIKES 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 84.8% of games, misses completely in 15.2%, and leaves about 171 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,327 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 YIKES 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 YIKES 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
YIKES can come back 63 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 YIKES; 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 YIKES
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to YIKES.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing YIKES:
Research on YIKES
Game-tree analysis and word research for YIKES, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with YIKES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,285 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 YIKES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.79; proven optimal play reaches 3.77. 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- YIKES sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
Yikes, how cold it is!
Yikes, and he's your doctor?
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).