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

IOTAS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with IOTAS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of iota

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 IOTAS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts IOTAS 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 90.1% of games, misses completely in 9.9%, and leaves about 112 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,338 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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___S I in the 1st position and S in the 5th position I__A_ I in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _O__S O in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe IOTAS 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.

5.10 Entropy (bits)
112 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 88% of evaluated openers
0.84 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How IOTAS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,338 Rank among openers
Opening with IOTAS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,338 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
909
4 guesses
1,154
5 guesses
209
6 guesses
14
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:
AIOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
25%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

IOTAS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

256 answers
234 answers
211 answers
131 answers
116 answers
101 answers
91 answers
83 answers
83 answers
73 answers
67 answers
65 answers
62 answers
62 answers
48 answers
47 answers
44 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1O1T1A1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Try next

GLARE CURLY CLINE DROLE DRONE SHALE

Strategy after playing IOTAS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing IOTAS:

11% chance
Suggested:
GLARE
10% chance
Suggested:
CURLY
9% chance
Suggested:
CLINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.8% →
GLARE 5.37 bits
9.9% →
CURLY 5.46 bits
8.9% →
CLINE 5.23 bits
5.5% →
DROLE 4.52 bits
4.9% →
DRONE 5.00 bits
4.3% →
SHALE 4.73 bits
3.8% →
SLEER 4.76 bits
3.5% →
CRANE 4.65 bits
3.5% →
TRITE 4.61 bits
3.1% →
SPILE 4.45 bits

Research on IOTAS

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

Optimal play

Opening with IOTAS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,808 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 IOTAS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 YUHTUHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, IOTAS is a kind of amount or letter.

Synonyms SHRED whit

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
IOTAS 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); 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).