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

STEIL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

A surname.

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 STEIL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STEIL 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 88.2% of games, misses completely in 11.8%, and leaves about 104 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #633 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 STEIL 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.

5.38 Entropy (bits)
104 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 97% of evaluated openers
0.56 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STEIL 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#633 Rank among openers
Opening with STEIL left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #633 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
1,014
4 guesses
1,073
5 guesses
170
6 guesses
16
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:
EILST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
33%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

STEIL can come back 120 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

281 answers
258 answers
126 answers
122 answers
101 answers
96 answers
92 answers
90 answers
78 answers
60 answers
48 answers
47 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
39 answers
37 answers
32 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1E1I1L1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing STEIL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STEIL:

12% chance
Suggested:
ACORN
11% chance
Suggested:
DOREE
5% chance
Suggested:
TROUT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.8%
ACORN 5.68 bits
10.9%
DOREE 5.27 bits
5.3%
TROUT 5.36 bits
5.1%
COALY 4.82 bits
4.3%
BEARE 4.56 bits
4.0%
REATE 4.79 bits
3.9%
DRONE 4.62 bits
3.8%
ROANY 4.69 bits
3.3%
ROANY 4.73 bits
2.5%
GIRTH 4.12 bits

Research on STEIL

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

Optimal play

Opening with STEIL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,177 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #328 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 STEEL.

Rhymes with STEEL WHEEL IDEAL STEAL KNEEL

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
STEIL 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).