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

STELL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /stɛl/

Noun

A stall; a fold for cattle.

Noun

A prop; a support, as for the feet in standing or climbing.

Verb

To place in position; set up, fix, plant; prop, mount.

Verb

To portray; delineate; display.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Middle English stellen, from Old English stellan (“to give a place to, set, place”), from Proto-West Germanic *stalljan (“to put, position”), from Proto-Indo-European *stel- (“to place, put, post, stand”). Cognate with Dutch stellen (“to set, put”), dated Low German stellen (“to put, place, fix”), German stellen (“to set, place, provide”), Old English steall (“position, place”). More at stall.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it STEHL.

Rhymes with HOTEL SMELL SHELL SPELL INTEL

Use STELL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with STELL Open Word Finder

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How STELL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STELL 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 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 182 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,434 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

S___L S in the 1st position and L in the 5th position S__L_ S in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _T__L T in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position ST_LL S in the 1st position, T in the 2nd position, L in the 4th position, and L in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in STELL.

First-turn measures

All four describe STELL 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.

4.63 Entropy (bits)
182 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STELL 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,434 Rank among openers
Opening with STELL left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,434 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
829
4 guesses
1,202
5 guesses
243
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ELST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

STELL can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

420 answers
363 answers
214 answers
129 answers
118 answers
99 answers
93 answers
75 answers
65 answers
57 answers
53 answers
45 answers
44 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1E1L1L1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

ROANY RAINE TRAIT TIARE PLAIN LEARE

Strategy after playing STELL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STELL:

18% chance
Suggested:
ROANY
15% chance
Suggested:
RAINE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRAIT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6% →
ROANY 5.77 bits
15.2% →
RAINE 5.27 bits
9.0% →
TRAIT 5.41 bits
5.4% →
TIARE 4.78 bits
4.9% →
PLAIN 4.81 bits
4.2% →
ROANY 4.76 bits
3.9% →
LEARE 4.39 bits
3.1% →
AMISS 4.78 bits
2.7% →
CARNE 4.40 bits
2.4% →
ROUSE 4.33 bits

Research on STELL

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

Optimal play

Opening with STELL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,794 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,113 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 3.76, 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
STELL sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).