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

MALTY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Of, pertaining to, containing, or characteristic of malt

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 MALTY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MALTY 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 80.0% of games, misses completely in 20.0%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,274 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 MALTY 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.

4.75 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 68% of evaluated openers
1.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MALTY 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#3,274 Rank among openers
Opening with MALTY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,274 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
920
4 guesses
1,178
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
12
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
1 vowels
Common:
ALT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
33%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

MALTY can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

474 answers
237 answers
205 answers
188 answers
122 answers
118 answers
90 answers
74 answers
55 answers
43 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
33 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1L1T1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MALTY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MALTY:

20% chance
Suggested:
IRONE
10% chance
Suggested:
SIREN
9% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.0%
IRONE 6.04 bits
10.0%
SIREN 5.59 bits
8.6%
CRANE 5.47 bits
7.9%
SLIER 5.06 bits
5.1%
RIONE 4.78 bits
5.0%
CLINE 4.66 bits
3.8%
SNARE 4.91 bits
3.1%
CORSE 4.80 bits
2.3%
POIRE 5.02 bits
1.8%
SCORE 4.58 bits

Research on MALTY

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

Optimal play

Opening with MALTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,500 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,286 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 MAWLTEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MALTY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (2.8 of 5).

In a sentence

Assam tea is known for its robust and malty flavors, originating in India.
© tatoeba.org contributor Ahha (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).