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

ALVAR

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A limestone pavement.

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 ALVAR performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ALVAR 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 249 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,349 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe ALVAR 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.

4.22 Entropy (bits)
249 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 34% of evaluated openers
1.72 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ALVAR 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#11,349 Rank among openers
Opening with ALVAR left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,349 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
754
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
317
6 guesses
24
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
28%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

ALVAR can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

578 answers
326 answers
236 answers
191 answers
141 answers
104 answers
97 answers
77 answers
45 answers
42 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1L1V4A1R1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing ALVAR

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ALVAR:

24% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
14% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
CASTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.3%
TOISE 6.04 bits
13.7%
TOISE 5.60 bits
9.9%
CASTE 5.31 bits
8.0%
TOILE 5.14 bits
5.9%
CADRE 4.50 bits
4.4%
TOISE 3.98 bits
4.1%
SOUCE 4.72 bits
3.2%
STALE 4.78 bits
1.9%
SNIDE 4.73 bits
1.8%
SPICE 3.82 bits

Research on ALVAR

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

Optimal play

Opening with ALVAR, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,657 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 ALVAR can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it ALVUR. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ALVAR sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Alvar Aalto is a famous Finnish architect.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).