TONAL
TONAL is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.
As an opener, it rules out about 95.7% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈtoʊnəl//ˈtəʊnəl/
- Adjective
-
Of or relating to tones or tonality.
- Adjective
-
Of or relating to the general character, mood, or trend of something.
- Noun
-
An animal companion which accompanies a person from birth to death.
Alternative forms: tona
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Not used yetNo past answer date found.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How TONAL performs as a guess
TONAL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 88.0% of games, misses completely in 12.0%, and leaves about 103 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #91 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.55 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe TONAL 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How TONAL 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches TONAL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TONAL can come back 123 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for TONAL; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing TONAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TONAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TONAL:
Research on TONAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for TONAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TONAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #433 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.72 guesses at best and is rank #68 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.55, 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
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TOHNUHL.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- TONAL sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
Chinese is a tonal language.
Vietnamese is a tonal language.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).