ICILY
ICILY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈaɪ.sɪ.li/
- Adverb
-
In the manner of ice; with a cold or chilling effect.
- Adverb
-
In an uncaring or coolly angry manner.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it YSIHLEE.
In a sentence
Tom stared at Mary icily.
Use ICILY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 86.5% 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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
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 ICILY performs as a guess
ICILY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 323 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,321 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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 ICILY 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 ICILY 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches ICILY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ICILY can come back 70 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 ICILY; 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 ICILY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ICILY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ICILY:
Research on ICILY
Game-tree analysis and word research for ICILY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ICILY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,411 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,242 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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
- ICILY 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).