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

CHIEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of chield.

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 CHIEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CHIEL 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 135 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,316 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 CHIEL 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.

5.14 Entropy (bits)
135 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHIEL 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,316 Rank among openers
Opening with CHIEL solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,316 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
965
4 guesses
1,096
5 guesses
211
6 guesses
19
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
38%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

CHIEL can come back 110 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

368 answers
281 answers
145 answers
141 answers
127 answers
108 answers
75 answers
66 answers
55 answers
48 answers
47 answers
42 answers
41 answers
40 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3H4I1E1L1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing CHIEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHIEL:

16% chance
Suggested:
SONAR
12% chance
Suggested:
SOARE
6% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5%
SONAR 5.84 bits
11.8%
SOARE 5.45 bits
6.1%
ROAST 4.59 bits
5.9%
ALLOT 5.06 bits
5.3%
ROAST 5.22 bits
4.5%
BLATE 4.60 bits
3.2%
STARY 4.61 bits
2.8%
SAURY 4.72 bits
2.3%
STANE 3.97 bits
2.0%
RINSE 4.34 bits

Research on CHIEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with CHIEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,424 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,142 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 CHEEL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CHIEL 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).