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

SELLE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete spelling of sell.

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 SELLE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SELLE 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 73.3% of games, misses completely in 26.7%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,043 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 SELLE 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 43% of evaluated openers
1.58 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SELLE 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,043 Rank among openers
Opening with SELLE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.81 average. It ranks #12,043 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
742
4 guesses
1,224
5 guesses
317
6 guesses
30
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
45%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

SELLE can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

634 answers
212 answers
173 answers
172 answers
167 answers
118 answers
102 answers
64 answers
53 answers
45 answers
42 answers
35 answers
33 answers
33 answers
30 answers
30 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1L1L1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing SELLE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SELLE:

27% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
9% chance
Suggested:
OATER
7% chance
Suggested:
CLAIM

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.7%
TRAIN 5.99 bits
8.9%
OATER 4.90 bits
7.3%
CLAIM 4.82 bits
7.2%
ORATE 4.37 bits
7.0%
ROAST 4.55 bits
5.0%
ROAST 4.95 bits
4.3%
RAINY 4.56 bits
2.7%
ARIEL 4.15 bits
2.2%
PARTE 3.86 bits
1.9%
DAILY 4.00 bits

Research on SELLE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SELLE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,070 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 SELLE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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

One syllable Say it SEHL.

Rhymes with HOTEL SMELL SHELL SPELL INTEL

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SELLE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).