PENAL
Yes, PENAL was the Wordle answer on August 2, 2026 (Wordle #1870).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈpiːnəl/
- Adjective
-
Of or relating to punishment.
“penal servitude”
- Adjective
-
Subject to punishment; punishable.
“a penal offence”
Alternative forms: pænal, pænall, penall, pœnal
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Old French peinal, from Medieval Latin penalis, from Latin poenalis, from poena (“punishment”), from Ancient Greek ποινή (poinḗ, “punishment”), from Proto-Indo-European *kʷoynéh₂.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PEENUHL.
Related meanings
Synonyms punishable illegal punitive
Opposites LEGAL
In a sentence
Tom goes to work as if it were penal labor.
Australia was started as a British penal colony.
Use PENAL in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.2% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: August 2, 2026 (#1870).
See the full page for that puzzle: August 2, 2026 (#1870).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How PENAL performs as a guess
PENAL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 87.5% of games, misses completely in 12.5%, and leaves about 114 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #785 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PENAL 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PENAL 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches PENAL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PENAL can come back 121 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PENAL; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PENAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PENAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PENAL:
Research on PENAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for PENAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PENAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #603 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 PENAL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
- PENAL sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.3 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).