QUELL
Yes, QUELL was the Wordle answer on June 13, 2026 (Wordle #1820).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /kwɛl/
- Verb
-
To subdue, put down, or silence (someone or something); to force (someone) to submit.
- Verb
-
To suppress, to put an end to (something); to extinguish.
“to quell grief”
- Noun
-
A subduing.
- Noun
-
A source, especially a spring.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English quellen, from Old English cwellan (“to kill”), from Proto-West Germanic *kwalljan, from Proto-Germanic *kwaljaną (“to make die; kill”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH-. Cognate with German quälen (“to torment; agonise; smite”), Swedish kvälja (“to torment”), Icelandic kvelja (“to torture; torment”). Compare also Old Armenian կեղ (keł, “sore, ulcer”), Old Church Slavonic жаль (žalĭ, “pain”). See also kill, which may be its doublet.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it KWEHL.
Rhymes with HOTEL SMELL SHELL SPELL INTEL
Related meanings
Synonyms stay appease
In a sentence
The authorities need to quell the outbreak.
What passion cannot music raise and quell?
Use QUELL in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 84.6% 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: June 13, 2026 (#1820).
See the full page for that puzzle: June 13, 2026 (#1820).
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 QUELL performs as a guess
QUELL 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 71.4% of games, misses completely in 28.6%, and leaves about 366 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,473 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.95 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 QUELL 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 QUELL 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 QUELL in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
QUELL can come back 49 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 QUELL; 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 QUELL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to QUELL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing QUELL:
Research on QUELL
Game-tree analysis and word research for QUELL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with QUELL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.97 guesses and ranks #14,550 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 QUELL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.95, at or below the proven-optimal 3.97, 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
- QUELL sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
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).