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

APPEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /əˈpɛl//ɑˈpɛl/

Noun

An act of striking the ground with the leading foot to frighten, distract, or mislead one's opponent.

Verb

Obsolete spelling of appeal.

Noun

Obsolete spelling of apple.

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 APPEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts APPEL 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 81.5% of games, misses completely in 18.5%, and leaves about 194 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,279 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 APPEL 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.

4.43 Entropy (bits)
194 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 47% of evaluated openers
1.52 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How APPEL 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
#10,279 Rank among openers
Opening with APPEL 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 #10,279 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
748
4 guesses
1,252
5 guesses
277
6 guesses
19
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:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
27%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

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

439 answers
290 answers
282 answers
162 answers
147 answers
143 answers
85 answers
81 answers
68 answers
58 answers
50 answers
50 answers
44 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
24 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1P3P3E1L1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing APPEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing APPEL:

18% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
12% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
12% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.5%
SNORT 5.89 bits
12.2%
NOIRE 5.23 bits
11.9%
CAIRN 5.11 bits
6.8%
SENOR 4.34 bits
6.2%
CRATE 4.96 bits
6.0%
COULD 4.77 bits
3.6%
TOILE 4.39 bits
3.4%
SAINT 4.18 bits
2.9%
POUTY 4.78 bits
2.4%
SLART 4.00 bits

Research on APPEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with APPEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,708 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 APPEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 APUHL.

Rhymes with APPLE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
APPEL 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.

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).