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

POKAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /poʊˈkɑl/

Noun

A tall drinking cup.

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 POKAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POKAL 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 79.6% of games, misses completely in 20.4%, and leaves about 201 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,171 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe POKAL 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)
201 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.5% 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 POKAL 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
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,171 Rank among openers
Opening with POKAL 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,171 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
862
4 guesses
1,201
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
13
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:
ALO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
27%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

POKAL can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

485 answers
350 answers
165 answers
165 answers
151 answers
111 answers
68 answers
67 answers
52 answers
50 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
36 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1K5A1L1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing POKAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POKAL:

20% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
15% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.4%
TRINE 6.12 bits
14.7%
TARSE 5.54 bits
7.0%
TRINE 5.51 bits
7.0%
TRONE 4.57 bits
6.4%
TUILE 5.18 bits
4.7%
STALE 4.84 bits
2.9%
BARON 4.71 bits
2.8%
URITE 5.20 bits
2.2%
CRINE 4.87 bits
2.1%
SIRED 4.52 bits

Research on POKAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with POKAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,702 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,797 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 3.71, 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 POHKUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POKAL 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).