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

REALS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of real

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Related meanings

Synonyms most very really material actual genuine

Opposites unreal nominal FALSE abstract

In a sentence

Argentinian grapes for five reals a box!
© tatoeba.org contributor marcelostockle (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Brazilians realized they paid trillions of reals in taxes to their government.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use REALS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.8% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How REALS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts REALS 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 90.9% of games, misses completely in 9.1%, and leaves about 77 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,040 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 REALS 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.

5.64 Entropy (bits)
77 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How REALS 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,040 Rank among openers
Opening with REALS 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,040 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
88
3 guesses
959
4 guesses
1,132
5 guesses
155
6 guesses
19

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AELRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
32%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

REALS can come back 119 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

216 answers
147 answers
130 answers
126 answers
126 answers
117 answers
85 answers
71 answers
63 answers
61 answers
58 answers
57 answers
55 answers
50 answers
48 answers
44 answers
40 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1E1A1L1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing REALS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing REALS:

9% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
6% chance
Suggested:
TRODE
5% chance
Suggested:
TANGY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.1% →
COUNT 5.60 bits
6.2% →
TRODE 4.42 bits
5.5% →
TANGY 4.76 bits
5.3% →
UNITE 5.12 bits
5.3% →
THORN 4.83 bits
4.9% →
SNOUT 4.91 bits
3.6% →
CLOUT 4.54 bits
3.0% →
SPINE 4.74 bits
2.6% →
CAROM 4.41 bits
2.6% →
BOITE 4.26 bits

Research on REALS

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

Optimal play

Opening with REALS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #732 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #376 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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
REALS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).