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

NIVAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NIVAL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Abounding with snow; snowy; snow-covered (now especially in reference to plant habitats).

Adjective

Found or thriving in snowy conditions.

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 NIVAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NIVAL 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 79.9% of games, misses completely in 20.1%, and leaves about 195 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,021 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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__A_ N in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _I__L I in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe NIVAL 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
195 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 54% of evaluated openers
1.41 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NIVAL 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,021 Rank among openers
Opening with NIVAL left 1 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,021 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
829
4 guesses
1,216
5 guesses
214
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
22%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

NIVAL can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

477 answers
325 answers
156 answers
154 answers
150 answers
122 answers
98 answers
87 answers
85 answers
61 answers
54 answers
52 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1I1V4A1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

TORSE CRATE SOUCE TRICE STALE TRONE

Strategy after playing NIVAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NIVAL:

20% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
14% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
7% chance
Suggested:
SOUCE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.1% →
TORSE 6.29 bits
13.7% →
CRATE 5.72 bits
6.6% →
SOUCE 5.19 bits
6.5% →
TORSE 5.32 bits
6.3% →
TRICE 5.48 bits
5.1% →
STALE 4.77 bits
4.1% →
TRONE 4.52 bits
3.7% →
SCOTE 4.29 bits
3.6% →
TRONE 4.55 bits
2.6% →
TREAD 4.42 bits

Research on NIVAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NIVAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,029 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,959 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 NYVUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NIVAL 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).