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

TEALS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TEALS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of teal

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 TEALS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TEALS 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 82 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #179 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.56 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 _E__S E in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TEALS 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.

5.64 Entropy (bits)
82 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.5% Avg ruled out
In the top 1% for first-turn entropy
0.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TEALS 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.

3.56 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#179 Rank among openers
Opening with TEALS left 1 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 3.56 average. It ranks #179 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
94
3 guesses
1,017
4 guesses
1,078
5 guesses
148
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
34%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

TEALS can come back 128 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

229 answers
210 answers
140 answers
91 answers
90 answers
84 answers
84 answers
80 answers
70 answers
67 answers
63 answers
58 answers
49 answers
48 answers
47 answers
44 answers
37 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1E1A1L1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

IRONY DRONE RAYON NORTH SCION CLOUD

Strategy after playing TEALS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TEALS:

10% chance
Suggested:
IRONY
9% chance
Suggested:
DRONE
6% chance
Suggested:
RAYON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.6% →
IRONY 5.47 bits
8.8% →
DRONE 5.36 bits
5.9% →
RAYON 5.04 bits
3.8% →
NORTH 4.93 bits
3.8% →
SCION 4.73 bits
3.5% →
CLOUD 4.48 bits
3.5% →
PRONE 4.79 bits
3.4% →
RANGE 4.34 bits
2.9% →
MORNE 4.22 bits
2.8% →
SNORT 4.23 bits

Research on TEALS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TEALS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #245 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.71 guesses at best and is rank #27 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.56, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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 TEELZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TEALS is a kind of green or duck.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TEALS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).