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

NAWAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

A barangay of Bokod, Benguet, Philippines.

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 NAWAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NAWAL 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 70.4% of games, misses completely in 29.6%, and leaves about 298 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,899 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 NAWAL 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.

4.03 Entropy (bits)
298 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 24% of evaluated openers
1.92 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NAWAL 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,899 Rank among openers
Opening with NAWAL 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 3.78 average. It ranks #10,899 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
758
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
287
6 guesses
16
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
25%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

NAWAL can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

702 answers
248 answers
230 answers
218 answers
143 answers
89 answers
64 answers
52 answers
52 answers
51 answers
50 answers
47 answers
41 answers
35 answers
34 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1W4A1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing NAWAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NAWAL:

30% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
10% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
10% chance
Suggested:
BIOSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.6%
TORSE 6.22 bits
10.4%
TOISE 5.55 bits
9.7%
BIOSE 5.06 bits
9.2%
CRATE 5.57 bits
6.0%
TORSE 4.89 bits
3.7%
SLATE 4.60 bits
2.7%
TRINE 4.56 bits
2.2%
SHIRE 5.18 bits
2.2%
TRICE 4.02 bits
2.1%
SPIER 4.28 bits

Research on NAWAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NAWAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,530 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,886 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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 NAHWUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NAWAL 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).