BANAL
Yes, BANAL was the Wordle answer on January 6, 2022 (Wordle #201).
As an opener, it rules out about 88.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /bəˈnɑːl//ˈbeɪnəl//bəˈnæl/
- Adjective
-
Common in a boring way, to the point of being predictable; containing nothing new or fresh.
“banal clichés”
- Adjective
-
Relating to a type of feudal jurisdiction or service.
Alternative forms: bannal
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 6, 2022 (#201).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 6, 2022 (#201).
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 BANAL performs as a guess
BANAL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 71.4% of games, misses completely in 28.6%, and leaves about 271 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,874 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 BANAL 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 BANAL 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches BANAL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BANAL can come back 91 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 BANAL; 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 BANAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BANAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BANAL:
Research on BANAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for BANAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BANAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,387 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,271 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 second syllable Say it BUHNAHL.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BANAL 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.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 13, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 20 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
In a sentence
He was asking banal questions.
The movie's ending was too banal.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).