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

TAELS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TAELS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of tael

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 TAELS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TAELS 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 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 87 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #265 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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.

T___S T in the 1st position and S in the 5th position T__L_ T in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TAELS 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.

5.57 Entropy (bits)
87 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.3% Avg ruled out
In the top 1% for first-turn entropy
0.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TAELS 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.

3.57 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#265 Rank among openers
Opening with TAELS left 2 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 3.57 average. It ranks #265 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
84
3 guesses
1,033
4 guesses
1,057
5 guesses
162
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:
AELST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
32%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

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

246 answers
229 answers
104 answers
91 answers
90 answers
85 answers
84 answers
83 answers
79 answers
72 answers
71 answers
67 answers
64 answers
45 answers
44 answers
44 answers
40 answers
37 answers
34 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1E1L1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

RIONE IRONY DRAIN NORTH SCION RAYON

Strategy after playing TAELS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TAELS:

10% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
10% chance
Suggested:
IRONY
4% chance
Suggested:
DRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.4% →
RIONE 5.36 bits
9.6% →
IRONY 5.47 bits
4.4% →
DRAIN 5.10 bits
3.8% →
NORTH 4.93 bits
3.8% →
SCION 4.73 bits
3.6% →
RAYON 4.16 bits
3.5% →
CLOUD 4.48 bits
3.5% →
SIREE 4.72 bits
3.3% →
BOREE 4.42 bits
3.0% →
BEARD 4.67 bits

Research on TAELS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TAELS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #544 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 TAELS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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 TEHLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TAELS is a kind of weight.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TAELS 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).