SPELL
Yes, SPELL was the Wordle answer on November 8, 2022 (Wordle #507).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /spɛl/
- Noun
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Words or a formula supposed to have magical powers.
“He cast a spell to cure warts.”
- Noun
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A magical effect or influence induced by an incantation or formula.
“under a spell”
- Verb
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To put under the influence of a spell; to affect by a spell; to bewitch; to fascinate; to charm.
- Verb
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To write or say the letters that form a word or part of a word.
“I find it difficult to spell because I'm dyslexic.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English spell, spel, from Old English spell (“news, story”), from Proto-Germanic *spellą (“speech, account, tale”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)pel- (“to tell”) or from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel- (“to speak, to sound”) with the s-mobile prefix. Cognate with dialectal German Spill, Icelandic spjall (“discussion, talk”), spjalla (“to discuss, to talk”), guðspjall (“gospel”) and Albanian fjalë (“word”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SPEHL.
Rhymes with HOTEL SMELL SHELL INTEL BELLE
Related meanings
Synonyms go WHILE turn PIECE WRITE tour
In a sentence
Can you spell it out?
Can you spell that for me?
Use SPELL in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.
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: November 8, 2022 (#507).
See the full page for that puzzle: November 8, 2022 (#507).
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 →SPELL in Connections
10 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . Showing the 5 most recent. A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1011
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SPELL appeared in INTERVAL (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #1007
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SPELL appeared in HYPNOTIC STATE (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #935
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SPELL appeared in BIT OF MAGIC (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #647
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SPELL appeared in SIGNIFY (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #544
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SPELL appeared in CURSE (green group).
How SPELL performs as a guess
SPELL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.3% of games, misses completely in 22.7%, and leaves about 239 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,752 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 SPELL 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 SPELL 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 SPELL in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SPELL can come back 84 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 SPELL; 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 SPELL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SPELL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SPELL:
Research on SPELL
Game-tree analysis and word research for SPELL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SPELL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,983 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,705 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SPELL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 23 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A1); among the first words English learners study.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 42 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.4 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).