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

ILEUS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɪliəs/

Noun

Disruption of the normal propulsive ability of the gastrointestinal tract, due to failure of peristalsis.

Noun

Disruption of the normal propulsive ability of the gastrointestinal tract from any cause.

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

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin īleus, from Ancient Greek εἰλεός (eileós, “intestinal obstruction”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use ILEUS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.6% 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 ILEUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ILEUS 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 88.6% of games, misses completely in 11.4%, and leaves about 128 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,147 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 ILEUS 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.

4.96 Entropy (bits)
128 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ILEUS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#6,147 Rank among openers
Opening with ILEUS 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,147 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
875
4 guesses
1,172
5 guesses
215
6 guesses
27

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EILSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
20%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

ILEUS can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

296 answers
271 answers
194 answers
125 answers
122 answers
118 answers
114 answers
102 answers
86 answers
70 answers
70 answers
56 answers
51 answers
47 answers
46 answers
38 answers
34 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1L1E1U1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ILEUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ILEUS:

12% chance
Suggested:
REATE
11% chance
Suggested:
CRONY
8% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.4% →
REATE 5.46 bits
11.4% →
CRONY 5.71 bits
8.1% →
TRAIN 5.26 bits
5.2% →
SPORT 5.17 bits
5.1% →
BURNT 4.68 bits
4.9% →
TRIDE 4.64 bits
4.8% →
REATE 4.57 bits
4.3% →
ROAST 4.86 bits
3.6% →
RALLY 4.80 bits
2.9% →
TRADE 4.63 bits

Research on ILEUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ILEUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,520 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,687 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
ILEUS 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).