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

NABLA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A Hebrew stringed instrument.

Noun

The symbol ∇, used to denote the gradient operator.

Alternative forms: nevel

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 NABLA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NABLA 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 71.4% of games, misses completely in 28.6%, and leaves about 284 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,155 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 NABLA 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.

4.08 Entropy (bits)
284 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 26% of evaluated openers
1.87 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NABLA 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,155 Rank among openers
Opening with NABLA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #9,155 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
790
4 guesses
1,265
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
18
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:
ALN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
24%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

NABLA can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

680 answers
260 answers
228 answers
178 answers
135 answers
114 answers
90 answers
74 answers
65 answers
50 answers
40 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1B3L1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing NABLA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NABLA:

29% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
11% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRACE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.6%
TORSE 6.27 bits
11.0%
TOISE 5.50 bits
9.6%
TRACE 5.74 bits
7.5%
POIRE 5.09 bits
5.7%
TORSE 4.89 bits
4.8%
REACT 4.76 bits
3.8%
SUITE 4.48 bits
3.1%
TRONE 4.53 bits
2.7%
ROUTE 5.12 bits
2.1%
TRICE 3.96 bits

Research on NABLA

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

Optimal play

Opening with NABLA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,162 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,108 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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 NABLUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NABLA 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).