ICING
Yes, ICING was the Wordle answer on January 21, 2025 (Wordle #1312).
As an opener, it rules out about 82.1% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈaɪsɪŋ/
- Noun
-
A sweet, often creamy and thick glaze made primarily of sugar, often enriched with ingredients like butter, egg whites, or flavorings, typically used for baked goods.
- Noun
-
A minor violation of ice hockey rules, occurring when a player shoots the puck from his/her side of the red line so that it crosses the goal line on the opponent's side. A team playing short-handed is not penalized for this.
- Verb
-
present participle and gerund of ice
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 21, 2025 (#1312).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 21, 2025 (#1312).
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 ICING performs as a guess
ICING 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 61.6% of games, misses completely in 38.4%, and leaves about 426 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,443 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 ICING 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 ICING 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 ICING in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ICING can come back 58 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 ICING; 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 ICING
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ICING.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ICING:
Research on ICING
Game-tree analysis and word research for ICING, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ICING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,131 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 ICING can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, 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.
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it YSIHNG.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, ICING is a kind of freeze or topping.
Synonyms ice FROST frosting
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- ICING sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 86 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (4.4 of 5).
In a sentence
That was just icing on the cake.
Do you like chocolate icing?
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).