Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

ILIAC

ILIAC is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 90.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɪliæk/

Adjective

Relating to the ilium.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 ILIAC performs as a guess

ILIAC 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 77.0% of games, misses completely in 23.0%, and leaves about 230 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,429 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe ILIAC 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.

4.23 Entropy (bits)
230 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 35% of evaluated openers
1.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ILIAC 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,429 Rank among openers
Opening with ILIAC left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,429 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
783
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
247
6 guesses
18
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
27%
All gray
23%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
B Y L A W
I L I A C

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ILIAC in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ILIAC can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

547 answers
352 answers
157 answers
134 answers
134 answers
129 answers
110 answers
105 answers
63 answers
61 answers
52 answers
50 answers
48 answers
44 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1L1I1A1C3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ILIAC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ILIAC:

23% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
15% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.0%
TORSE 6.28 bits
14.8%
TARSE 5.58 bits
6.6%
RONTE 5.16 bits
5.6%
TRONE 5.47 bits
5.6%
TRONE 5.22 bits
5.4%
LOWLY 4.76 bits
4.6%
SALLE 4.89 bits
4.4%
CRATE 5.01 bits
2.7%
BROSE 4.55 bits
2.6%
TREAD 4.49 bits

Research on ILIAC

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

Optimal play

Opening with ILIAC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,306 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,924 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it YLEEAK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ILIAC sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).