5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess B tier for first-turn info

WHALE

Yes, WHALE was the Wordle answer on July 23, 2023 (Wordle #764).

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WHALE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈweɪl//ˈwɛj(ə)l//ˈwæɪl/

Noun

Any large cetacean, usually with the exclusion of dolphins and porpoises.

Noun

Any species of Cetacea.

Verb

To hunt for whales.

Verb

To thrash, to flog, to beat vigorously or soundly.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: July 23, 2023 (#764).

See the full page for that puzzle: July 23, 2023 (#764).

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

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How WHALE performs as a guess

WHALE 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 85.1% of games, misses completely in 14.9%, and leaves about 140 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,811 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

W___E W in the 1st position and E in the 5th position W__L_ W in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _H__E H in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in WHALE.

First-turn measures

All four describe WHALE 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.

4.97 Entropy (bits)
140 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 82% of evaluated openers
0.98 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHALE 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,811 Rank among openers
Opening with WHALE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,811 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
823
4 guesses
1,215
5 guesses
228
6 guesses
15
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
2 vowels
Common:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
38%
All gray
15%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L U M P
L E A V E
W H A L E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches WHALE in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

WHALE can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

354 answers
252 answers
218 answers
172 answers
108 answers
87 answers
85 answers
82 answers
78 answers
74 answers
51 answers
51 answers
50 answers
48 answers
39 answers
39 answers
34 answers
28 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4A1L1E1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

MOIST TRIED RAYON SIREN CLOUT MOUTH

Strategy after playing WHALE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHALE:

15% chance
Suggested:
MOIST
11% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
9% chance
Suggested:
RAYON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.9% →
MOIST 5.88 bits
10.6% →
TRIED 5.21 bits
9.2% →
RAYON 4.94 bits
7.2% →
SIREN 4.65 bits
4.5% →
CLOUT 4.50 bits
3.7% →
MOUTH 4.84 bits
3.6% →
SETER 4.35 bits
3.5% →
SONAR 4.51 bits
3.3% →
GRANT 4.32 bits
3.1% →
LEPER 4.33 bits

Research on WHALE

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHALE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,551 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,414 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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

One syllable Say it WAYL.

Rhymes with SCALE EMAIL TRAIL SHALE SNAIL

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WHALE is a kind of someone or blower.

Synonyms GIANT hulk heavyweight

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WHALE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 10 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 95 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.6 of 5).

In a sentence

I had a whale of a time.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He had a whale of a time.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).