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

SPEEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

To talk at length, to spiel.

Noun

A story; a spiel.

Noun

A splinter; a strip of wood or metal.

Verb

To climb.

Alternative forms: speil, spele, speal, spiel

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 SPEEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SPEEL 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 77.3% of games, misses completely in 22.7%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,043 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 SPEEL 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.

4.70 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 65% of evaluated openers
1.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPEEL 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,043 Rank among openers
Opening with SPEEL 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,043 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
68
3 guesses
862
4 guesses
1,180
5 guesses
224
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
37%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

SPEEL can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

539 answers
258 answers
186 answers
132 answers
128 answers
100 answers
94 answers
89 answers
67 answers
46 answers
42 answers
37 answers
37 answers
35 answers
31 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1P3E1E1L1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SPEEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPEEL:

23% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
11% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
COALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.7%
TRAIN 6.02 bits
10.9%
TIARE 5.37 bits
7.8%
COALY 4.85 bits
5.6%
ROAST 4.57 bits
5.4%
ROANY 4.26 bits
4.2%
ROAST 4.89 bits
4.0%
BAILE 4.50 bits
3.7%
PARTY 4.81 bits
2.8%
TRIAL 4.40 bits
1.9%
ROUTE 4.20 bits

Research on SPEEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with SPEEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,614 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 SPEEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 SPEEL. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SPEEL 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).