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

SKOAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Interjection

A toast when drinking, roughly equivalent to cheers.

Verb

To make such a toast.

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 SKOAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SKOAL 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 159 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,234 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 SKOAL 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.

4.82 Entropy (bits)
159 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 73% of evaluated openers
1.13 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SKOAL 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,234 Rank among openers
Opening with SKOAL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,234 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
938
4 guesses
1,159
5 guesses
194
6 guesses
15
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:
ALOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
32%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

SKOAL can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

412 answers
290 answers
206 answers
143 answers
101 answers
100 answers
80 answers
80 answers
63 answers
62 answers
58 answers
47 answers
46 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1K5O1A1L1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing SKOAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SKOAL:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRICE
9% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
TRINE 6.11 bits
12.2%
TRICE 5.56 bits
8.7%
RONTE 5.40 bits
6.0%
TUILE 5.18 bits
4.3%
TABLE 4.62 bits
4.2%
TRINE 5.12 bits
3.4%
TRINE 4.51 bits
3.4%
URITE 5.06 bits
2.7%
PRATE 4.44 bits
2.6%
CAROM 4.64 bits

Research on SKOAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with SKOAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,436 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #2,028 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 SKOHL.

Rhymes with WHOLE STOLE TROLL KNOLL ECOLE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SKOAL 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).