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

ZOUKS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of zouk

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Use ZOUKS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 83.4% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How ZOUKS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZOUKS 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 64.7% of games, misses completely in 35.3%, and leaves about 396 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,745 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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 ZOUKS 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.

3.53 Entropy (bits)
396 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZOUKS 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#13,745 Rank among openers
Opening with ZOUKS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.88 average. It ranks #13,745 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
19
3 guesses
635
4 guesses
1,332
5 guesses
339
6 guesses
28

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
21%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

ZOUKS can come back 48 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

841 answers
304 answers
240 answers
178 answers
168 answers
74 answers
66 answers
65 answers
52 answers
43 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
34 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
14 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10O1U1K5S1
Total: 18 points

Words With Friends

Total: 19 points

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

Strategy after playing ZOUKS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZOUKS:

35% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
STALE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.3% →
RAILE 6.17 bits
12.8% →
STALE 5.72 bits
10.1% →
TRONE 5.26 bits
7.5% →
TALER 4.59 bits
7.0% →
RAILE 4.83 bits
3.1% →
TRONE 4.25 bits
2.8% →
CARLE 5.15 bits
2.7% →
PLATE 4.71 bits
2.2% →
SHIER 4.12 bits
1.8% →
TRIPE 4.04 bits

Research on ZOUKS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZOUKS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,687 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.04 guesses at best and is rank #6,677 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZOUKS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).