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

TICAL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TICAL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tɪˈkɑːl//tɪˈkɔːl//ˈtiːk(ə)l/

Noun

An old Thai measurement of weight, the baht, of about 15 grams.

Noun

A Burmese measurement of weight, the kyattha, of about 16.3293 grams (0.576 ounces).

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 TICAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TICAL 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 85.0% of games, misses completely in 15.0%, and leaves about 124 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #288 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___L T in the 1st position and L in the 5th position T__A_ T in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _I__L I in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TICAL 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.

5.15 Entropy (bits)
124 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.80 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TICAL 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#288 Rank among openers
Opening with TICAL left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.57 average. It ranks #288 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
1,053
4 guesses
1,055
5 guesses
158
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:
AILT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
26%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

TICAL can come back 113 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

356 answers
231 answers
139 answers
129 answers
124 answers
102 answers
92 answers
92 answers
77 answers
66 answers
55 answers
52 answers
49 answers
45 answers
35 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1I1C3A1L1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

DORSE SNORE SHOER SOYLE DRONE SALLE

Strategy after playing TICAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TICAL:

15% chance
Suggested:
DORSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SNORE
6% chance
Suggested:
SHOER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.0% →
DORSE 6.06 bits
9.7% →
SNORE 5.25 bits
5.9% →
SHOER 5.52 bits
5.4% →
SOYLE 4.95 bits
5.2% →
DRONE 5.36 bits
4.3% →
SALLE 4.69 bits
3.9% →
PRONE 5.40 bits
3.9% →
RANSE 4.80 bits
3.2% →
SONDE 4.77 bits
2.8% →
CRANE 4.73 bits

Research on TICAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with TICAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,172 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 #196 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TYKUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TICAL is a kind of unit.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TICAL 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).