Possible answer Not used yet A tier for first-turn info

RENAL

RENAL is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 96.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɹiː.nəl//ˈɹi.nəl/

Adjective

Pertaining to the kidneys.

“renal transplant”

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 RENAL performs as a guess

RENAL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 90.6% of games, misses completely in 9.4%, and leaves about 84 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #856 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 RENAL 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.

5.55 Entropy (bits)
84 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
96.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 99% of evaluated openers
0.39 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RENAL 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#856 Rank among openers
Opening with RENAL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #856 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
88
3 guesses
980
4 guesses
1,094
5 guesses
171
6 guesses
18
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:
AELNR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
28%
All gray
9%

Example solver route

R O A T E
L Y N C H
R E N A L

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches RENAL in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

RENAL can come back 130 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

223 answers
161 answers
133 answers
132 answers
122 answers
115 answers
98 answers
76 answers
74 answers
73 answers
71 answers
65 answers
63 answers
51 answers
45 answers
41 answers
41 answers
39 answers
35 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1E1N1A1L1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing RENAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RENAL:

9% chance
Suggested:
HOIST
7% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
6% chance
Suggested:
COURT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.4%
HOIST 5.76 bits
6.8%
TOISE 4.71 bits
5.6%
COURT 5.30 bits
5.6%
COAST 4.92 bits
5.1%
TOISE 5.42 bits
4.8%
SOILY 4.72 bits
4.1%
CHART 4.53 bits
3.2%
SAUTE 4.41 bits
3.1%
SNOUT 4.92 bits
3.1%
SLATY 4.20 bits

Research on RENAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with RENAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #774 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #519 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it REENUHL.

Rhymes with PENAL VENAL

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RENAL 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.

In a sentence

Have you ever been diagnosed with renal failure?
© tatoeba.org contributor NurseMeeks (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The doctor thinks it's renal colic.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).