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

NIDAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Of or pertaining to a nidus.

Adjective

Of or pertaining to nests.

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 NIDAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NIDAL 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 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 160 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,554 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 NIDAL 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.

4.89 Entropy (bits)
160 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NIDAL 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,554 Rank among openers
Opening with NIDAL left 1 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,554 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
968
4 guesses
1,133
5 guesses
167
6 guesses
14
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
23%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

NIDAL can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

419 answers
307 answers
140 answers
132 answers
127 answers
121 answers
88 answers
77 answers
76 answers
67 answers
47 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1I1D2A1L1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing NIDAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NIDAL:

18% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
13% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
6% chance
Suggested:
SOUCE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6%
TORSE 6.40 bits
12.9%
TARSE 5.67 bits
5.9%
SOUCE 5.21 bits
5.6%
TORSE 5.37 bits
5.3%
TRICE 5.37 bits
5.1%
STALE 4.85 bits
3.7%
TARGE 4.65 bits
3.2%
TOISE 4.57 bits
3.2%
SCOTE 4.33 bits
2.8%
CRUET 5.00 bits

Research on NIDAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NIDAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,961 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 NIDAL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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 second syllable Say it NIHDAHL.

Rhymes with MAHAL CABAL BANAL LAVAL MOLLE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NIDAL 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).