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

SHALT

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ʃælt/

Verb

second-person singular simple present indicative of shall

“Thou shalt not kill.”

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 SHALT performs as a guess

SHALT 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 82.1% of games, misses completely in 17.9%, and leaves about 135 possible answers on average.

In the current bounded six-turn policy, it ranks #74 of 182 evaluated openers; exact misses rank first, then average guesses among wins.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #22 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.53 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 SHALT 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.

5.27 Entropy (bits)
135 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 94% of evaluated openers
0.68 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHALT 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.

3.53 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#22 Rank among openers
Opening with SHALT left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.53 average. It ranks #22 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
1,088
4 guesses
1,048
5 guesses
132
6 guesses
8
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
1 vowels
Common:
ALST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
40%
All gray
18%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I N K
S H A L T

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SHALT in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SHALT can come back 129 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

426 answers
210 answers
159 answers
101 answers
98 answers
95 answers
72 answers
68 answers
66 answers
60 answers
56 answers
55 answers
46 answers
43 answers
36 answers
28 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4A1L1T1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SHALT

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHALT:

18% chance
Suggested:
DRONE
9% chance
Suggested:
RAMEN
7% chance
Suggested:
RIONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.9%
DRONE 6.16 bits
8.8%
RAMEN 5.29 bits
6.7%
RIONE 5.01 bits
4.3%
NOIRE 5.37 bits
4.1%
RENAL 4.71 bits
4.0%
PRONE 5.14 bits
3.0%
RIONE 5.13 bits
2.9%
DRICE 4.58 bits
2.8%
GOIER 4.88 bits
2.5%
DRICE 4.46 bits

Research on SHALT

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHALT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #584 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #196 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.53, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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 SHALT.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHALT sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Thou shalt defend the Church.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (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).