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

HAMAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /həˈmɒl//həˈmɔːl/

Noun

A porter in Turkey and nearby countries.

Alternative forms: hammal, hamaul, hummal, hummaul

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 HAMAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HAMAL 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 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 305 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,005 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 HAMAL 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.

4.08 Entropy (bits)
305 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 27% of evaluated openers
1.86 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAMAL 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,005 Rank among openers
Opening with HAMAL left 2 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 3.76 average. It ranks #10,005 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
795
4 guesses
1,221
5 guesses
269
6 guesses
25
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:
AL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
27%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

HAMAL can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

736 answers
231 answers
203 answers
164 answers
155 answers
91 answers
90 answers
60 answers
58 answers
49 answers
45 answers
34 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1M3A1L1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing HAMAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAMAL:

31% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
10% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.0%
TRONE 6.15 bits
9.7%
TOILE 5.08 bits
8.6%
TRONE 5.48 bits
6.9%
TRICE 5.65 bits
6.5%
TRINE 4.99 bits
3.8%
CORSE 5.25 bits
3.8%
STANE 4.55 bits
2.5%
SENOR 4.04 bits
2.4%
TRODE 4.41 bits
2.1%
CRISE 4.52 bits

Research on HAMAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAMAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,328 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,277 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, 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 HAYMUHL.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HAMAL 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).