ALOFT
Yes, ALOFT was the Wordle answer on February 5, 2022 (Wordle #231).
As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /əˈlɔft//əˈlɑft//əˈlɒft/
- Adverb
-
At, to, or in the air or sky.
“high winds aloft”
- Adverb
-
Above, overhead, in a high place; up.
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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: February 5, 2022 (#231).
See the full page for that puzzle: February 5, 2022 (#231).
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 ALOFT performs as a guess
ALOFT is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 84.0% of games, misses completely in 16.0%, and leaves about 147 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,458 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 ALOFT 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 ALOFT 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches ALOFT in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ALOFT can come back 111 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 ALOFT; 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 ALOFT
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ALOFT.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ALOFT:
Research on ALOFT
Game-tree analysis and word research for ALOFT, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ALOFT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,310 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #833 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
- ALOFT sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 11, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 36 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).
In a sentence
He stood there with the poker held aloft.
I saw a flock of birds flying aloft.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).