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

HILLO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Interjection

Obsolete form of hello.

Verb

To holler, shout loudly at someone

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

Use HILLO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.9% 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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How HILLO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HILLO 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 74.3% of games, misses completely in 25.7%, and leaves about 266 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,694 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 HILLO 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
266 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HILLO 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,694 Rank among openers
Opening with HILLO left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,694 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
767
4 guesses
1,233
5 guesses
281
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ILO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
23%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

HILLO can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

613 answers
332 answers
235 answers
185 answers
127 answers
108 answers
85 answers
68 answers
66 answers
54 answers
50 answers
39 answers
36 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4I1L1L1O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing HILLO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HILLO:

26% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
14% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.7% →
TARSE 6.29 bits
13.9% →
TRONE 5.35 bits
9.9% →
TRINE 5.59 bits
7.8% →
REACT 5.29 bits
5.3% →
CARSE 5.68 bits
4.5% →
DANSE 4.65 bits
3.6% →
COOER 4.17 bits
2.9% →
CRANE 4.45 bits
2.8% →
CRUET 4.54 bits
2.3% →
SAUTE 4.79 bits

Research on HILLO

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

Optimal play

Opening with HILLO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,513 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 HILLO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
HILLO 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).