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

HALED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of hale

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

Related meanings

Synonyms WHOLE FORCE pressure drag cart squeeze

Opposites unhealthy

Use HALED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.9% 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 HALED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HALED 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 86.5% of games, misses completely in 13.5%, and leaves about 120 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,831 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 HALED 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.

5.13 Entropy (bits)
120 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HALED 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,831 Rank among openers
Opening with HALED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,831 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
891
4 guesses
1,196
5 guesses
181
6 guesses
5

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
33%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

HALED can come back 112 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

321 answers
238 answers
150 answers
128 answers
117 answers
115 answers
113 answers
108 answers
96 answers
61 answers
60 answers
55 answers
49 answers
45 answers
45 answers
37 answers
37 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1L1E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing HALED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HALED:

13% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
10% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
6% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.5% →
SNORT 5.95 bits
10.0% →
TORSE 5.29 bits
6.3% →
TRAIN 5.27 bits
5.4% →
SENOR 4.48 bits
4.9% →
CLOUT 4.61 bits
4.8% →
SHORT 5.05 bits
4.7% →
TONEY 4.17 bits
4.5% →
REAST 4.84 bits
4.0% →
FLAIL 4.05 bits
2.6% →
STOLE 4.25 bits

Research on HALED

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

Optimal play

Opening with HALED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,160 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 HALED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HALED 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).