SHOAL
Yes, SHOAL was the Wordle answer on March 10, 2026 (Wordle #1725).
As an opener, it rules out about 94.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ʃəʊl/
- Noun
-
A sandbank or sandbar creating a shallow.
- Noun
-
A shallow in a body of water.
- Verb
-
To arrive at a shallow (or less deep) area.
- Verb
-
To cause a shallowing; to come to a more shallow part of.
Alternative forms: sheld, shole, shoald, shold
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
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: March 10, 2026 (#1725).
See the full page for that puzzle: March 10, 2026 (#1725).
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 SHOAL performs as a guess
SHOAL 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 128 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,848 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 SHOAL 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 SHOAL 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 SHOAL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SHOAL can come back 109 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 SHOAL; 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 SHOAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SHOAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SHOAL:
Research on SHOAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for SHOAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SHOAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,381 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,083 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 SHOHL. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SHOAL is a kind of bank or water.
Synonyms school shallow
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SHOAL sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
In a sentence
The ship hit a shoal.
We've located the shoal of herring.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).