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

MALVA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmæl.və/

Noun

Any plant of the genus Malva, a mallow.

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 MALVA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MALVA 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 63.5% of games, misses completely in 36.5%, and leaves about 407 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,014 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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 MALVA 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.

3.64 Entropy (bits)
407 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 10% of evaluated openers
2.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MALVA 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,014 Rank among openers
Opening with MALVA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #13,014 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
658
4 guesses
1,270
5 guesses
354
6 guesses
19
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)
64%
Green tile
23%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

MALVA can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

866 answers
284 answers
253 answers
166 answers
147 answers
89 answers
58 answers
53 answers
47 answers
39 answers
36 answers
25 answers
24 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1L1V4A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing MALVA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MALVA:

36% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.5%
TRONE 6.17 bits
12.0%
TRACE 5.67 bits
10.7%
SLIER 5.05 bits
7.0%
TRINE 4.91 bits
6.2%
SLATE 4.62 bits
3.7%
POIRE 5.17 bits
2.4%
TOILE 4.28 bits
2.2%
RIONE 4.53 bits
2.0%
VISOR 4.76 bits
1.6%
CRISE 4.51 bits

Research on MALVA

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

Optimal play

Opening with MALVA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,980 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,755 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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 MAHLVUH.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MALVA 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).