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

MALIS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of mali

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 MALIS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MALIS 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 83.9% of games, misses completely in 16.1%, and leaves about 144 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,147 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 MALIS 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.

4.92 Entropy (bits)
144 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.9% 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 MALIS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,147 Rank among openers
Opening with MALIS 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 3.62 average. It ranks #2,147 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
987
4 guesses
1,106
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
14
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:
AILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
27%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

MALIS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

383 answers
208 answers
192 answers
186 answers
133 answers
125 answers
106 answers
99 answers
77 answers
61 answers
49 answers
44 answers
39 answers
39 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1L1I1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MALIS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MALIS:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRADE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1%
TRONE 6.06 bits
8.8%
TRONE 5.36 bits
8.1%
TRADE 5.60 bits
7.8%
TONER 5.52 bits
5.6%
ROUET 5.00 bits
5.3%
RONTE 4.82 bits
4.5%
REACT 4.75 bits
4.2%
STURE 4.78 bits
3.2%
TRINE 4.64 bits
2.6%
TRINE 4.18 bits

Research on MALIS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MALIS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,285 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #562 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 MAHLEEZ.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MALIS 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).