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

CANAL

Yes, CANAL was the Wordle answer on July 10, 2026 (Wordle #1847).

As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CANAL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kəˈnæl//kəˈnal//kəˈnɛl/

Noun

An artificial waterway or artificially improved river used for travel, shipping, or irrigation.

Noun

A tubular channel within the body or within a plant.

Verb

To dig an artificial waterway in or to (a place), especially for drainage

Verb

To travel along a canal by boat

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: July 10, 2026 (#1847).

See the full page for that puzzle: July 10, 2026 (#1847).

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

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How CANAL performs as a guess

CANAL 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 74.6% of games, misses completely in 25.4%, and leaves about 223 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,277 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.

C___L C in the 1st position and L in the 5th position C__A_ C in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _A__L A in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe CANAL 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
223 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CANAL 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,277 Rank among openers
Opening with CANAL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,277 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
885
4 guesses
1,177
5 guesses
212
6 guesses
16
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
34%
All gray
25%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
B A N A L
C A N A L

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches CANAL in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

CANAL can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

603 answers
200 answers
199 answers
174 answers
117 answers
94 answers
76 answers
69 answers
61 answers
60 answers
53 answers
45 answers
44 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
26 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1N1A1L1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TORSE BIOSE TOISE STARE STIRE SLATE

Strategy after playing CANAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CANAL:

25% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
8% chance
Suggested:
BIOSE
8% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.4% →
TORSE 6.31 bits
8.4% →
BIOSE 5.15 bits
8.4% →
TOISE 5.47 bits
7.3% →
STARE 5.53 bits
4.9% →
TORSE 4.84 bits
4.0% →
STIRE 5.14 bits
3.2% →
SLATE 4.57 bits
2.9% →
TROPE 4.93 bits
2.6% →
SOWER 4.27 bits
2.5% →
SIDEY 4.50 bits

Research on CANAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with CANAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,817 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,295 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 KUHNAL.

Rhymes with SHALL

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CANAL is a kind of channel or passage.

Synonyms channel duct

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CANAL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 17 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 88 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

In a sentence

I got a root canal.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The canal ran north and south.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).