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

ILEUM

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

The last, and usually the longest, division of the small intestine; the part between the jejunum and large intestine.

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

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 ILEUM performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ILEUM 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 85.9% of games, misses completely in 14.1%, and leaves about 161 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,355 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 ILEUM 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.

4.69 Entropy (bits)
161 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 65% of evaluated openers
1.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ILEUM 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#7,355 Rank among openers
Opening with ILEUM left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,355 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
830
4 guesses
1,186
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
25
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EILU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
21%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

ILEUM can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

346 answers
335 answers
230 answers
136 answers
131 answers
116 answers
106 answers
100 answers
67 answers
65 answers
58 answers
58 answers
45 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1L1E1U1M3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing ILEUM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ILEUM:

15% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
14% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6%
ROAST 5.55 bits
14.1%
SNORT 5.87 bits
9.7%
SAINT 5.33 bits
5.7%
GRUNT 4.99 bits
5.5%
RINSE 4.74 bits
4.9%
REATE 4.72 bits
4.5%
TROLL 4.82 bits
4.2%
SHART 5.14 bits
2.8%
SORAL 4.14 bits
2.7%
TARSE 4.61 bits

Research on ILEUM

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

Optimal play

Opening with ILEUM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,242 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,051 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 YLUHM. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ILEUM is a kind of gut.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ILEUM 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.

In a sentence

Nutrients are absorbed through the wall of the ileum.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).