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

AURAL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɔːɹəl//ˈɔɹəl//ˈoɹəl/

Adjective

Of or pertaining to the ear.

Adjective

Of or pertaining to sound or hearing.

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

Etymology

From Latin aura (“moving air, breeze, vital air”) + -al.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it AWRUHL.

Rhymes with MORAL CORAL SOREL BOREL LORAL

In a sentence

The aural test was the most challenging part of the exam.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use AURAL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% 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 AURAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts AURAL 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,558 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 AURAL 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.

4.61 Entropy (bits)
177 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How AURAL 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#9,558 Rank among openers
Opening with AURAL left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,558 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
836
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
299
6 guesses
28

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ALRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
30%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

AURAL can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
286 answers
224 answers
179 answers
154 answers
110 answers
97 answers
91 answers
72 answers
61 answers
48 answers
42 answers
40 answers
32 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1U1R1A1L1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing AURAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing AURAL:

18% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
12% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
9% chance
Suggested:
CASTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.8% →
SIENT 6.15 bits
12.0% →
TOISE 5.23 bits
9.4% →
CASTE 5.27 bits
7.5% →
BIOSE 5.03 bits
6.5% →
STANE 4.44 bits
4.6% →
STANE 4.79 bits
4.1% →
STONE 5.23 bits
3.8% →
STIME 4.19 bits
3.0% →
SHOTE 4.75 bits
2.6% →
STONE 4.60 bits

Research on AURAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with AURAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,285 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,392 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
AURAL 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (3.2 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).