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

WEDEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of wedeln.

Verb

Alternative form of wedeln.

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 WEDEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WEDEL 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 70.3% of games, misses completely in 29.7%, and leaves about 293 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,249 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 WEDEL 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.

4.21 Entropy (bits)
293 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 33% of evaluated openers
1.73 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WEDEL 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,249 Rank among openers
Opening with WEDEL solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,249 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
768
4 guesses
1,210
5 guesses
301
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
32%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

WEDEL can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

705 answers
286 answers
233 answers
119 answers
106 answers
101 answers
84 answers
74 answers
45 answers
36 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4E1D2E1L1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing WEDEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WEDEL:

30% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
12% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
10% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.7%
ROAST 6.02 bits
12.0%
ROAST 5.50 bits
9.8%
COAST 5.09 bits
5.0%
ROAST 4.49 bits
4.5%
DRAIN 5.19 bits
4.3%
SLANT 4.62 bits
3.5%
SHART 4.77 bits
3.1%
SONAR 4.66 bits
1.9%
ARISE 4.33 bits
1.5%
SNARY 4.32 bits

Research on WEDEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with WEDEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,746 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 WEDEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77; proven optimal play reaches 3.76. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 WEHDUHL.

Rhymes with MEDAL PEDAL

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WEDEL is a kind of ski.

Familiarity and learning

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