TRAIL
Yes, TRAIL was the Wordle answer on February 17, 2025 (Wordle #1339).
As an opener, it rules out about 96.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /tɹeɪl/
- Verb
-
To follow behind (someone or something); to tail (someone or something).
“The hunters trailed their prey deep into the woods.”
- Verb
-
To drag (something) behind on the ground.
“You'll get your coat all muddy if you trail it around like that.”
- Noun
-
The track or indication marking the route followed by something that has passed, such as the footprints of animal on land or the contrail of an airplane in the sky.
“trail of blood”
- Noun
-
A route for travel over land, especially a narrow, unpaved pathway for use by hikers, horseback riders, etc.
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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: February 17, 2025 (#1339).
See the full page for that puzzle: February 17, 2025 (#1339).
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 TRAIL performs as a guess
TRAIL 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 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 82 possible answers on average.
In the current bounded six-turn policy, it ranks #56 of 182 evaluated openers; exact misses rank first, then average guesses among wins.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #35 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.54 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 TRAIL 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 TRAIL 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 TRAIL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TRAIL can come back 130 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 TRAIL; 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 TRAIL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TRAIL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TRAIL:
Research on TRAIL
Game-tree analysis and word research for TRAIL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TRAIL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #242 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 #54 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.54, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, TRAIL is a kind of course or track.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- TRAIL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 28 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).
In a sentence
The trail is always there.
Where are we on the trail?
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).