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

THALE

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

No dictionary definition for THALE is recorded in our sourced data.

As an opener, it rules out about 96.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

We do not have a sourced definition for this word yet.

Check THALE on Wiktionary or report a missing entry.

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 THALE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts THALE 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 89.3% of games, misses completely in 10.7%, and leaves about 91 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #399 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 THALE 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.

5.55 Entropy (bits)
91 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 99% of evaluated openers
0.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How THALE 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#399 Rank among openers
Opening with THALE 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 3.58 average. It ranks #399 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
96
3 guesses
995
4 guesses
1,081
5 guesses
166
6 guesses
15
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:
AELT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
40%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

THALE can come back 134 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

254 answers
191 answers
154 answers
148 answers
111 answers
98 answers
75 answers
68 answers
67 answers
66 answers
57 answers
54 answers
49 answers
49 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
37 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1H4A1L1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing THALE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing THALE:

11% chance
Suggested:
GROIN
8% chance
Suggested:
SIDER
6% chance
Suggested:
RAYON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.7%
GROIN 5.56 bits
8.0%
SIDER 5.11 bits
6.5%
RAYON 5.04 bits
6.2%
SIREN 4.71 bits
4.7%
SNORT 5.10 bits
4.1%
CLOUD 4.49 bits
3.2%
RESET 4.77 bits
2.9%
RAMEN 4.05 bits
2.8%
LEPER 4.33 bits
2.8%
SONAR 4.46 bits

Research on THALE

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

Optimal play

Opening with THALE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #336 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #244 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, 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 THAYL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
THALE 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).