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

ILLER

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

comparative form of ill: more ill

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 ILLER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ILLER 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 85.4% of games, misses completely in 14.6%, and leaves about 151 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,938 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 ILLER 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.

4.73 Entropy (bits)
151 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 67% of evaluated openers
1.21 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ILLER 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#9,938 Rank among openers
Opening with ILLER left 4 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 3.76 average. It ranks #9,938 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
806
4 guesses
1,183
5 guesses
283
6 guesses
29
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
2 vowels
Common:
EILR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
29%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

ILLER can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

346 answers
237 answers
233 answers
209 answers
169 answers
93 answers
89 answers
82 answers
77 answers
75 answers
69 answers
66 answers
45 answers
40 answers
36 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1L1L1E1R1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ILLER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ILLER:

15% chance
Suggested:
SAUNT
10% chance
Suggested:
TEASE
10% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6%
SAUNT 5.79 bits
10.0%
TEASE 5.52 bits
9.8%
COAST 5.58 bits
8.8%
SAINT 5.32 bits
7.1%
COAST 4.87 bits
3.9%
COAST 3.57 bits
3.7%
SNIDE 4.52 bits
3.5%
SAULT 4.89 bits
3.2%
COAST 4.50 bits
3.2%
SAINT 4.44 bits

Research on ILLER

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

Optimal play

Opening with ILLER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,623 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 ILLER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 YLUR. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ILLER is a kind of upset.

Synonyms sick BADLY complaint poorly ominous bad

Opposites well good harmless

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ILLER 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

On the right, the Iller, Lech, Isar and Inn rivers draw towards the Danube.
© tatoeba.org contributor Objectivesea (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).