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

MALWA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

beer made with millet, common in Africa

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 MALWA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MALWA 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 65.0% of games, misses completely in 35.0%, and leaves about 381 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,245 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe MALWA 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.

3.70 Entropy (bits)
381 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MALWA 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,245 Rank among openers
Opening with MALWA 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 3.82 average. It ranks #12,245 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
710
4 guesses
1,265
5 guesses
317
6 guesses
21
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)
65%
Green tile
23%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

MALWA can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

830 answers
280 answers
240 answers
165 answers
148 answers
89 answers
88 answers
56 answers
54 answers
40 answers
35 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1L1W4A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MALWA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MALWA:

35% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.0%
TRONE 6.13 bits
11.8%
TRACE 5.66 bits
10.1%
SLIER 5.10 bits
7.0%
TRINE 4.93 bits
6.2%
STANE 4.71 bits
3.7%
POIRE 5.16 bits
3.7%
SIREN 5.32 bits
2.4%
TOILE 4.33 bits
2.3%
STONE 4.50 bits
1.7%
SURGE 3.83 bits

Research on MALWA

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

Optimal play

Opening with MALWA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,540 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,374 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 MAHLWUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MALWA 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.

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).