NAILS
NAILS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /neɪlz/
- Noun
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plural of nail
- Noun
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The four round-topped pedestals outside the Corn Exchange in Bristol on which bargains used to be struck.
- Verb
-
third-person singular simple present indicative of nail
- Adjective
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Ellipsis of hard as nails.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it NAYLZ.
Rhymes with SALES WALES FAILS MALES TALES
Related meanings
Synonyms complete arrest cop boom BLAST ace
In a sentence
I need to find some nails.
I just cut my nails.
Use NAILS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →NAILS in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #809
Reveal this appearance's category
NAILS appeared in ASSOCIATED WITH HARDNESS (blue group).
How NAILS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts NAILS 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 86.0% of games, misses completely in 14.0%, and leaves about 113 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #664 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe NAILS 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How NAILS 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
NAILS can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for NAILS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing NAILS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to NAILS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing NAILS:
Research on NAILS
Game-tree analysis and word research for NAILS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with NAILS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #888 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #369 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- NAILS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 11 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).