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.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of iota

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

Related meanings

Synonyms SHRED whit

Use IOTAS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% 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 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 113 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.

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)
113 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out

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

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:

257 answers
236 answers
211 answers
132 answers
116 answers
101 answers
94 answers
83 answers
83 answers
73 answers
67 answers
65 answers
63 answers
62 answers
49 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
17 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.

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 5.45 bits
8.9% →
CLINE 5.23 bits
5.5% →
DROLE 4.53 bits
4.9% →
DRONE 5.00 bits
4.2% →
SHALE 4.73 bits
3.9% →
SUPER 4.87 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.

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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).