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

NULLA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of nullah (“stream-bed, ravine”).

Noun

Alternative form of nulla-nulla (“Australian war club”).

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 NULLA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NULLA 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 76.8% of games, misses completely in 23.2%, and leaves about 251 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,505 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 NULLA 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.

4.14 Entropy (bits)
251 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 29% of evaluated openers
1.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NULLA 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,505 Rank among openers
Opening with NULLA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,505 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
786
4 guesses
1,235
5 guesses
277
6 guesses
21
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:
ALNU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
21%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

NULLA can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

551 answers
405 answers
206 answers
127 answers
127 answers
126 answers
111 answers
104 answers
58 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1U1L1L1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing NULLA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NULLA:

23% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
17% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.2%
TORSE 6.22 bits
17.1%
TARSE 5.67 bits
8.7%
TOISE 5.33 bits
5.3%
SIREE 4.87 bits
5.3%
GRICE 4.56 bits
5.3%
REACT 4.89 bits
4.7%
TORSE 5.46 bits
4.4%
MORSE 4.54 bits
2.4%
STIRE 4.47 bits
1.6%
SHIRE 4.41 bits

Research on NULLA

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

Optimal play

Opening with NULLA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,621 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 NULLA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, 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 NOOLUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NULLA 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).