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

NEWEL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈnjuː.əl//ˈnu.əl//ˈnju.əl/

Noun

Either of two kinds of supporting post in a staircase.

Noun

A novelty; a new thing.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Inherited from Middle English nowel, *newel, from Old French noel, from either Early Medieval Latin nōdellus (“buckle”, diminutive of nōdus "knot") or Late Latin nucālis (“nut-like”, derivative of nux "nut"). Doublet of noil and noyau.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use NEWEL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NEWEL Open Word Finder

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How NEWEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NEWEL 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 75.0% of games, misses completely in 25.0%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,139 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

N___L N in the 1st position and L in the 5th position N__E_ N in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _E__L E in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position NE_EL N in the 1st position, E in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and L in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in NEWEL.

First-turn measures

All four describe NEWEL 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.

4.30 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NEWEL 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,139 Rank among openers
Opening with NEWEL solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,139 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
772
4 guesses
1,248
5 guesses
266
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
29%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

NEWEL can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

595 answers
265 answers
232 answers
223 answers
111 answers
98 answers
91 answers
70 answers
65 answers
48 answers
45 answers
38 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1E1W4E1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

ROAST COAST SAUCY SABLE SHART ARISE

Strategy after playing NEWEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NEWEL:

25% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
11% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
10% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.0% →
ROAST 6.08 bits
11.1% →
ROAST 5.43 bits
9.7% →
COAST 5.22 bits
9.4% →
SAUCY 4.99 bits
4.7% →
ROAST 4.29 bits
4.1% →
SABLE 4.52 bits
3.8% →
SHART 4.78 bits
2.9% →
ARISE 4.70 bits
2.7% →
ROAST 4.59 bits
2.0% →
SHART 5.07 bits

Research on NEWEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NEWEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,038 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with NEWEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
NEWEL 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).