TRIAL
Yes, TRIAL was the Wordle answer on January 12, 2026 (Wordle #1668).
As an opener, it rules out about 96.4% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈtɹaɪəl/[tɹaɪəl]
- Noun
-
An occasion on which a person or thing is tested to find out how well they perform or how suitable they are.
- Noun
-
A meeting or series of meetings in a court of law at which evidence is presented to a judge (and sometimes a jury) to allow them to decide on a legal matter (especially whether an accused person is guilty of a crime).
“If you are convicted at trial, you have the right to file an appeal.”
- Adjective
-
Pertaining to a trial or test.
- Adjective
-
Attempted on a provisional or experimental basis.
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: January 12, 2026 (#1668).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 12, 2026 (#1668).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How TRIAL performs as a guess
TRIAL 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 85 possible answers on average.
In the current bounded six-turn policy, it ranks #88 of 182 evaluated openers; exact misses rank first, then average guesses among wins.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #40 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 TRIAL 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 TRIAL 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 TRIAL in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TRIAL can come back 126 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 TRIAL; 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 TRIAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TRIAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TRIAL:
Research on TRIAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for TRIAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TRIAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #348 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 #65 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 3.61, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, TRIAL is a kind of try or experiment.
Synonyms run test visitation
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- TRIAL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 74 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 B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 9, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 61 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.3 of 5).
In a sentence
He will go to trial.
The case went to trial.
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; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).