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

UGALI

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

African cornmeal porridge

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 UGALI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts UGALI 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 83.5% of games, misses completely in 16.5%, and leaves about 175 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,783 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 UGALI 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.

4.51 Entropy (bits)
175 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 52% of evaluated openers
1.44 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How UGALI 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,783 Rank among openers
Opening with UGALI solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,783 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
852
4 guesses
1,187
5 guesses
249
6 guesses
17
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
3 vowels
Common:
AILU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
21%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

UGALI can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

391 answers
280 answers
257 answers
193 answers
161 answers
111 answers
99 answers
72 answers
69 answers
65 answers
55 answers
49 answers
43 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1G2A1L1I1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing UGALI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing UGALI:

16% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
11% chance
Suggested:
CATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.5%
TORSE 5.97 bits
11.8%
TRINE 5.36 bits
10.8%
CATER 5.43 bits
8.1%
TORSE 5.42 bits
6.8%
STORE 5.03 bits
4.7%
TALER 4.67 bits
4.2%
SOBER 4.72 bits
3.0%
SATIN 4.59 bits
2.9%
SILER 4.38 bits
2.7%
TRONE 4.81 bits

Research on UGALI

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

Optimal play

Opening with UGALI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,777 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with UGALI can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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

Three syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it YOOGAHLEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
UGALI 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.

In a sentence

In Kenya, roasted termites are eaten with Ugali.
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).