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

MISAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An Indian dish of vegetables in a spicy gravy.

Noun

Alternative form of misl.

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 MISAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MISAL 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 147 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,544 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 MISAL 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.

4.93 Entropy (bits)
147 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 79% of evaluated openers
1.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MISAL 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,544 Rank among openers
Opening with MISAL solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,544 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
960
4 guesses
1,129
5 guesses
183
6 guesses
17
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
26%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

MISAL can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

383 answers
272 answers
176 answers
154 answers
130 answers
102 answers
99 answers
98 answers
60 answers
54 answers
49 answers
49 answers
45 answers
39 answers
35 answers
32 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1S1A1L1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MISAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MISAL:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
7% chance
Suggested:
TONER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1%
TRONE 6.06 bits
11.5%
TRONE 5.47 bits
7.4%
TONER 5.47 bits
6.5%
TRINE 5.64 bits
5.5%
COLEY 4.97 bits
4.3%
ALATE 4.47 bits
4.2%
CRATE 4.81 bits
4.1%
RONTE 4.71 bits
2.5%
TRONE 4.36 bits
2.3%
NADIR 4.59 bits

Research on MISAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with MISAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,546 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #898 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 MEESUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MISAL 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).