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

KAILS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kail

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

Related meanings

Synonyms cole kale

Use KAILS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% 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 KAILS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KAILS 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 82.0% of games, misses completely in 18.0%, and leaves about 156 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,532 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 KAILS 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.

4.80 Entropy (bits)
156 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KAILS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,532 Rank among openers
Opening with KAILS 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,532 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
909
4 guesses
1,171
5 guesses
203
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
31%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

KAILS can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

428 answers
194 answers
187 answers
177 answers
146 answers
120 answers
109 answers
96 answers
94 answers
48 answers
46 answers
44 answers
39 answers
39 answers
37 answers
35 answers
31 answers
28 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1I1L1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing KAILS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KAILS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TONER
8% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
8% chance
Suggested:
PORTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0% →
TONER 6.04 bits
8.1% →
CRATE 5.57 bits
7.8% →
PORTE 5.65 bits
7.4% →
RONTE 5.40 bits
6.1% →
RONTE 4.80 bits
5.0% →
ROUET 4.90 bits
4.6% →
RONTE 4.60 bits
4.0% →
TRONE 4.97 bits
3.9% →
PEART 4.92 bits
2.0% →
LINER 4.35 bits

Research on KAILS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KAILS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,160 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,675 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0).