Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

NAVAL

Yes, NAVAL was the Wordle answer on June 27, 2021 (Wordle #8).

As an opener, it rules out about 86.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈneɪvəl/

Adjective

Of or relating to a navy.

Adjective

Of or relating to ships in general.

“naval architect”

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: June 27, 2021 (#8).

See the full page for that puzzle: June 27, 2021 (#8).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

Wordle Observatory · optional

Played this Wordle?

Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How NAVAL performs as a guess

NAVAL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 69.9% of games, misses completely in 30.1%, and leaves about 310 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,658 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 NAVAL 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.

3.96 Entropy (bits)
310 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
86.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 21% of evaluated openers
1.99 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NAVAL 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,658 Rank among openers
Opening with NAVAL left 3 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 3.80 average. It ranks #11,658 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
718
4 guesses
1,267
5 guesses
298
6 guesses
22
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)
70%
Green tile
26%
All gray
30%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
N A V A L

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches NAVAL in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

NAVAL can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

714 answers
273 answers
237 answers
214 answers
143 answers
85 answers
68 answers
58 answers
56 answers
52 answers
43 answers
39 answers
33 answers
31 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1V4A1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing NAVAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NAVAL:

30% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
11% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.1%
TORSE 6.24 bits
11.5%
TOISE 5.51 bits
10.0%
TOILE 5.07 bits
9.0%
CRATE 5.63 bits
6.0%
TRICE 4.84 bits
3.6%
SLATE 4.55 bits
2.9%
TRINE 4.56 bits
2.4%
SOWER 4.34 bits
2.4%
TREAD 4.35 bits
2.2%
TRICE 3.99 bits

Research on NAVAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NAVAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,318 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 #5,259 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 NAYVUHL.

Rhymes with NAVEL

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NAVAL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 17 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 64 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.3 of 5).

In a sentence

I went to the Naval Academy.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Russia is a major naval power.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).