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

ARGOL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of arghul (“musical instrument”).

Noun

potassium tartrate

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 ARGOL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ARGOL 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 87.2% of games, misses completely in 12.8%, and leaves about 122 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,919 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 ARGOL 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.

5.11 Entropy (bits)
122 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 88% of evaluated openers
0.84 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ARGOL 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,919 Rank among openers
Opening with ARGOL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #1,919 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
971
4 guesses
1,111
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
18
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
29%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

ARGOL can come back 115 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

304 answers
227 answers
170 answers
166 answers
146 answers
121 answers
116 answers
95 answers
85 answers
58 answers
56 answers
51 answers
43 answers
38 answers
38 answers
36 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1R1G2O1L1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing ARGOL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ARGOL:

13% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
10% chance
Suggested:
CASTE
7% chance
Suggested:
CONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.8%
SIENT 6.10 bits
9.6%
CASTE 5.40 bits
7.2%
CONTE 5.24 bits
7.0%
SENTE 5.21 bits
6.1%
SLICE 5.16 bits
5.1%
SERRY 4.60 bits
4.9%
SCALE 4.83 bits
4.0%
SOWNE 4.48 bits
3.6%
SPITE 4.89 bits
2.4%
DRICE 4.00 bits

Research on ARGOL

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

Optimal play

Opening with ARGOL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,304 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 ARGOL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 AHRGOHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ARGOL 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).