EVILS
EVILS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈiːvɪlz//ˈiːvəlz/
- Noun
-
plural of evil
- Noun
-
Synonym of evil eye (“dirty look”).
“Don't go giving me evils!”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it EEVUHLZ.
Related meanings
Synonyms vicious bad BLACK dark ugly wicked
Opposites good virtuous
In a sentence
War is the cause of many evils.
Clear society of its evils.
Use EVILS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.
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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
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 EVILS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts EVILS 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 83.3% of games, misses completely in 16.7%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,822 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 EVILS 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 EVILS 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
Feedback distribution
EVILS can come back 87 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 EVILS; 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 EVILS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to EVILS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing EVILS:
Research on EVILS
Game-tree analysis and word research for EVILS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with EVILS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,794 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,592 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- EVILS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
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).