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

NOYAU

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A French liqueur made at Poissy in north central France from brandy and flavoured with almonds and the pits of apricots.

Noun

A small nucleus or core group of people or animals.

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 NOYAU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NOYAU 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 85.0% of games, misses completely in 15.0%, and leaves about 167 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,080 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe NOYAU 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.

4.56 Entropy (bits)
167 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.39 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NOYAU 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,080 Rank among openers
Opening with NOYAU left 2 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,080 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
765
4 guesses
1,235
5 guesses
291
6 guesses
23
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
3 vowels
Common:
ANOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
20%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

NOYAU can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

362 answers
357 answers
168 answers
165 answers
113 answers
103 answers
96 answers
88 answers
86 answers
86 answers
65 answers
65 answers
59 answers
55 answers
49 answers
47 answers
36 answers
34 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1O1Y4A1U1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing NOYAU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NOYAU:

15% chance
Suggested:
STARE
15% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
7% chance
Suggested:
STIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.2%
STARE 5.51 bits
15.0%
SLIER 5.87 bits
7.1%
STIRE 5.16 bits
7.0%
SLIER 5.35 bits
4.8%
STIRE 4.90 bits
4.3%
TRICE 4.60 bits
4.0%
WRITE 4.31 bits
3.7%
STILE 4.34 bits
3.6%
CLEAR 4.56 bits
3.6%
SLART 4.35 bits

Research on NOYAU

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

Optimal play

Opening with NOYAU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,822 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,041 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 NOYOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.