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

BORAL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

aluminium borotartrate, an astringent and antiseptic.

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

Etymology

Proprietary name, shortened from the chemical name.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with MORAL CORAL AURAL SOREL BOREL

Use BORAL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% 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 BORAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BORAL 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 85.7% of games, misses completely in 14.3%, and leaves about 133 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,201 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 BORAL 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.

5.08 Entropy (bits)
133 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BORAL 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,201 Rank among openers
Opening with BORAL left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,201 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
954
4 guesses
1,105
5 guesses
208
6 guesses
8

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
33%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

BORAL can come back 120 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

342 answers
244 answers
193 answers
143 answers
143 answers
115 answers
107 answers
103 answers
95 answers
58 answers
39 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1R1A1L1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BORAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BORAL:

14% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
10% chance
Suggested:
STANE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRIED

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.3% →
SIENT 6.20 bits
10.2% →
STANE 5.37 bits
8.1% →
TRIED 5.31 bits
6.0% →
SUITE 5.16 bits
6.0% →
TRACE 4.70 bits
4.8% →
SPALE 4.74 bits
4.5% →
SIENT 5.11 bits
4.3% →
STONE 4.29 bits
4.0% →
TRINE 4.50 bits
2.4% →
SHUTE 4.58 bits

Research on BORAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with BORAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,845 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #939 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
BORAL 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).