5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

IONIC

Yes, IONIC was the Wordle answer on October 12, 2022 (Wordle #480).

As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with IONIC Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /aɪˈɒnɪk/

Adjective

of, relating to, or containing ions

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

Used once

Past Wordle answer: October 12, 2022 (#480).

See the full page for that puzzle: October 12, 2022 (#480).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How IONIC performs as a guess

IONIC 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 70.7% of games, misses completely in 29.3%, and leaves about 292 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,056 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

I__I_ I in the 1st position and I in the 4th position _O__C O in the 2nd position and C in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in IONIC.

First-turn measures

All four describe IONIC 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.

4.00 Entropy (bits)
292 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
87.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How IONIC 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
99.75% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#10,056 Rank among openers
Opening with IONIC left 6 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 3.76 average. It ranks #10,056 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
768
4 guesses
1,274
5 guesses
251
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:
INO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
25%
All gray
29%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S C O L D
C Y N I C
I O N I C

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches IONIC in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

IONIC can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

696 answers
247 answers
195 answers
185 answers
167 answers
145 answers
75 answers
67 answers
62 answers
51 answers
50 answers
43 answers
38 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
20 answers
19 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1O1N1I1C3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

TARSE STILE SATER CRATE TALER STAGE

Strategy after playing IONIC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing IONIC:

29% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
STILE
8% chance
Suggested:
SATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.3% →
TARSE 6.32 bits
10.4% →
STILE 5.43 bits
8.2% →
SATER 5.15 bits
7.8% →
CRATE 5.74 bits
7.0% →
TALER 4.63 bits
6.1% →
TALER 5.20 bits
3.2% →
STAGE 4.35 bits
2.8% →
SWARE 4.42 bits
2.6% →
TRADE 5.03 bits
2.1% →
CRAKE 4.50 bits

Research on IONIC

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

Optimal play

Opening with IONIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,819 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,768 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 second syllable Say it YAHNIHK.

Rhymes with SONIC TONIC CONIC

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, IONIC is a kind of greek.

Synonyms ATTIC

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
IONIC sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

What is an ionic bond?
© tatoeba.org contributor mailohilohi (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Mercuric nitrate is an ionic compound.
© tatoeba.org contributor mervert1 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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