5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

BELLE

Yes, BELLE was the Wordle answer on April 17, 2026 (Wordle #1763).

As an opener, it rules out about 84.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BELLE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɛl/

Noun

An attractive woman.

“In her new dress she felt like the belle of the ball.”

Noun

A fellow gay man.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: April 17, 2026 (#1763).

See the full page for that puzzle: April 17, 2026 (#1763).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How BELLE performs as a guess

BELLE 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 65.7% of games, misses completely in 34.3%, and leaves about 360 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,182 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

B___E B in the 1st position and E in the 5th position B__L_ B in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _E__E E in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in BELLE.

First-turn measures

All four describe BELLE 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.

3.90 Entropy (bits)
360 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
84.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BELLE 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,182 Rank among openers
Opening with BELLE left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,182 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
723
4 guesses
1,239
5 guesses
327
6 guesses
22
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
39%
All gray
34%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I N G
A B B E Y
B E L L E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches BELLE in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

BELLE can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

814 answers
259 answers
236 answers
188 answers
94 answers
65 answers
63 answers
53 answers
42 answers
40 answers
40 answers
39 answers
34 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1L1L1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

ROAST SONAR RAINY ARIEL SAUCY ENTER

Strategy after playing BELLE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BELLE:

34% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
11% chance
Suggested:
SONAR
10% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.3% →
ROAST 5.95 bits
10.9% →
SONAR 5.20 bits
9.9% →
ROAST 5.19 bits
7.9% →
SONAR 5.02 bits
4.0% →
RAINY 4.65 bits
2.7% →
ROAST 4.68 bits
2.7% →
ARIEL 4.28 bits
2.2% →
SAUCY 4.40 bits
1.8% →
ENTER 4.13 bits
1.7% →
SOAPY 4.50 bits

Research on BELLE

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

Optimal play

Opening with BELLE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,243 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 BELLE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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

One syllable Say it BEHL.

Rhymes with HOTEL SMELL SHELL SPELL INTEL

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BELLE is a kind of girl.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BELLE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 6 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.8 of 5).

In a sentence

Mary was the belle of the ball.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Mary looked like Belle from the Beauty and the Beast.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).