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

IDOLA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of idolon

Noun

plural of idolum

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

How it sounds

Three syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it IHDOHLUH.

Rhymes with VIOLA

Use IDOLA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% 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 IDOLA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts IDOLA 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 88.3% of games, misses completely in 11.7%, and leaves about 153 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,424 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 IDOLA 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.

4.75 Entropy (bits)
153 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How IDOLA 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,424 Rank among openers
Opening with IDOLA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,424 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
887
4 guesses
1,169
5 guesses
216
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AILO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
21%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

IDOLA can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

348 answers
280 answers
249 answers
156 answers
137 answers
132 answers
88 answers
63 answers
60 answers
60 answers
60 answers
58 answers
56 answers
48 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
24 answers
18 answers
18 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1D2O1L1A1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing IDOLA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing IDOLA:

15% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
12% chance
Suggested:
TERSE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6% →
TARSE 5.72 bits
11.7% →
TERSE 6.08 bits
10.4% →
TRINE 5.40 bits
6.5% →
TORSE 5.17 bits
5.7% →
RANSE 4.79 bits
5.5% →
STURE 4.61 bits
3.7% →
BLEEP 4.51 bits
2.6% →
BARON 4.84 bits
2.5% →
DETER 4.75 bits
2.5% →
SAINT 4.72 bits

Research on IDOLA

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

Optimal play

Opening with IDOLA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,269 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 IDOLA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
IDOLA 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).