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

CECAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Alternative spelling of caecal.

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

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

How CECAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CECAL 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 184 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,340 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe CECAL 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.

4.58 Entropy (bits)
184 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 57% of evaluated openers
1.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CECAL 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,340 Rank among openers
Opening with CECAL left 3 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,340 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
771
4 guesses
1,252
5 guesses
247
6 guesses
23
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:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
29%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

CECAL can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

414 answers
333 answers
259 answers
148 answers
127 answers
115 answers
89 answers
83 answers
63 answers
57 answers
39 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3E1C3A1L1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing CECAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CECAL:

17% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
14% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
SNORT 5.96 bits
14.0%
TRONE 5.39 bits
10.9%
TRAIN 5.27 bits
6.2%
TARSE 4.69 bits
5.3%
SOILY 4.74 bits
4.8%
TERSE 4.63 bits
3.7%
SLIDE 4.45 bits
3.5%
SLATY 4.01 bits
2.7%
TOUCH 4.67 bits
2.4%
TABLE 3.75 bits

Research on CECAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with CECAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,177 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 CECAL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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 first syllable Say it SEEKUHL. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CECAL 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).