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

SWALE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sweɪl/

Noun

A low tract of moist or marshy land.

Noun

A long narrow and shallow trough between ridges on a beach, running parallel to the coastline.

Verb

Alternative form of sweal (“melt and waste away, or singe”).

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

Etymology

Possibly from Middle English swale (“a shady place, a shadow”), perhaps of North Germanic origin; akin to Old Norse svalr (“cool, fresh”), Icelandic svalir (“a balcony running along a wall”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SWALE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SWALE 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 SWALE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SWALE 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 86.5% of games, misses completely in 13.5%, and leaves about 116 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,109 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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___E S in the 1st position and E in the 5th position S__L_ S in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _W__E W in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position SW_LE S in the 1st position, W in the 2nd position, L in the 4th position, and E in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SWALE 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.

5.27 Entropy (bits)
116 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SWALE 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,109 Rank among openers
Opening with SWALE left 1 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 3.65 average. It ranks #4,109 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
89
3 guesses
862
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
200
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
42%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

SWALE can come back 118 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

323 answers
227 answers
198 answers
132 answers
95 answers
92 answers
82 answers
72 answers
71 answers
69 answers
59 answers
49 answers
45 answers
39 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1W4A1L1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

COUNT TRIED RAINY GRICE CLOUT SNOUT

Strategy after playing SWALE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SWALE:

14% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
10% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
8% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.5% →
COUNT 5.86 bits
9.5% →
TRIED 5.23 bits
8.3% →
RAINY 4.90 bits
5.5% →
GRICE 4.39 bits
4.0% →
CLOUT 4.59 bits
3.9% →
SNOUT 4.55 bits
3.4% →
CATER 4.33 bits
3.0% →
TONAL 4.49 bits
3.0% →
REVEL 4.29 bits
2.9% →
HOIST 4.74 bits

Research on SWALE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SWALE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,511 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 SWALE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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
SWALE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).