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

EXFIL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Clipping of exfiltration (“the act of going out of a place”).

Noun

Clipping of exfiltration (“covert extraction of data”).

Verb

Clipping of exfiltrate.

Alternative forms: exfill

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Use EXFIL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.3% of possible answers.

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 EXFIL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EXFIL 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 76.6% of games, misses completely in 23.4%, and leaves about 301 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,593 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.87 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 EXFIL 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.

3.85 Entropy (bits)
301 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EXFIL 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.

3.87 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#13,593 Rank among openers
Opening with EXFIL left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.87 average. It ranks #13,593 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
632
4 guesses
1,247
5 guesses
388
6 guesses
28

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
16%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

EXFIL can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

555 answers
529 answers
184 answers
177 answers
143 answers
132 answers
86 answers
50 answers
49 answers
49 answers
48 answers
35 answers
32 answers
28 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1X8F4I1L1
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing EXFIL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EXFIL:

23% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
22% chance
Suggested:
SAREE
8% chance
Suggested:
PRINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.4%
ROAST 6.02 bits
22.3%
SAREE 5.54 bits
7.7%
PRINT 5.03 bits
7.5%
SOAPY 5.05 bits
6.0%
LADLE 4.44 bits
5.6%
RINSE 4.75 bits
3.6%
COAST 5.04 bits
2.1%
BILLY 3.84 bits
2.1%
SONAR 4.25 bits
2.1%
PATEE 3.63 bits

Research on EXFIL

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

Optimal play

Opening with EXFIL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,225 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,821 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.87, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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
EXFIL 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).