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

DALEK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative letter-case form of Dalek.

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 DALEK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DALEK 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 83.6% of games, misses completely in 16.4%, and leaves about 146 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,747 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 DALEK 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.

4.91 Entropy (bits)
146 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 79% of evaluated openers
1.03 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DALEK 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,747 Rank among openers
Opening with DALEK solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,747 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
823
4 guesses
1,238
5 guesses
222
6 guesses
8
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:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
36%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

DALEK can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

389 answers
269 answers
161 answers
139 answers
127 answers
116 answers
113 answers
93 answers
63 answers
59 answers
50 answers
45 answers
40 answers
40 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2A1L1E1K5
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing DALEK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DALEK:

16% chance
Suggested:
HOIST
11% chance
Suggested:
STIRE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.4%
HOIST 6.01 bits
11.3%
STIRE 5.35 bits
6.8%
ROAST 5.17 bits
5.9%
SENOR 4.47 bits
5.3%
RONTE 4.13 bits
4.9%
SOILY 4.55 bits
4.8%
SHART 5.09 bits
3.9%
ROAST 4.25 bits
2.7%
STOLE 4.32 bits
2.5%
SLART 4.07 bits

Research on DALEK

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

Optimal play

Opening with DALEK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,404 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 DALEK can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70; proven optimal play reaches 3.66. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 DALEHK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DALEK sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).