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

EISEL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈeɪsəl//ˈiːsəl//ˈeɪzəl/

Noun

vinegar, verjuice

Alternative forms: eisell, esile, esill, eysell

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

Etymology

From Middle English aisel, aisille, aysel, from Old French aisil, from Vulgar Latin *acētillum, a diminutive of Latin acētum (“vinegar”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

Use EISEL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% 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 EISEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EISEL 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 82.8% of games, misses completely in 17.2%, and leaves about 149 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,670 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 EISEL 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.

4.87 Entropy (bits)
149 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EISEL 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#6,670 Rank among openers
Opening with EISEL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,670 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
880
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
253
6 guesses
20

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
30%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

EISEL can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

409 answers
227 answers
176 answers
150 answers
148 answers
105 answers
103 answers
98 answers
78 answers
70 answers
53 answers
52 answers
48 answers
41 answers
36 answers
33 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1I1S1E1L1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing EISEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EISEL:

17% chance
Suggested:
COURT
10% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.2% →
COURT 5.81 bits
9.5% →
TRACE 5.69 bits
7.4% →
ROAST 5.19 bits
6.3% →
TRAIN 5.46 bits
6.2% →
ALLOT 4.93 bits
4.4% →
ROANY 4.18 bits
4.3% →
SHART 4.77 bits
4.1% →
BLATE 4.52 bits
3.3% →
DIRTY 3.92 bits
2.9% →
TRINE 4.58 bits

Research on EISEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with EISEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #5,941 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 EISEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
EISEL 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).