BALLS
BALLS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /bɔːlz//baːlz//bɑlz/
- Noun
-
plural of ball
“Can you believe he can juggle six balls at once?”
- Noun
-
The testicles.
“After that shot, his balls were really hurting!”
- Verb
-
Speaking or acting with bravado to achieve (something)
- Verb
-
To engage in sexual intercourse.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it BAWLZ.
Rhymes with CALLS FALLS WALLS HALLS MALLS
Related meanings
Synonyms baseball egg formal GLOBE nut lump
In a sentence
You don't have the balls.
Do you even have balls?
Use BALLS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% of possible answers.
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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How BALLS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts BALLS 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 72.4% of games, misses completely in 27.6%, and leaves about 278 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,337 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe BALLS 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 BALLS 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
Feedback distribution
BALLS can come back 83 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 BALLS; 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 BALLS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BALLS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BALLS:
Research on BALLS
Game-tree analysis and word research for BALLS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BALLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,725 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 BALLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BALLS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 33 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.8 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).