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

ISSUE

Yes, ISSUE was the Wordle answer on August 18, 2025 (Wordle #1521).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ISSUE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɪʃuː//ˈɪsjuː//ˈɪʃjuː/

Noun

The action or an instance of flowing or coming out, an outflow

Noun

Someone or something that flows out or comes out

Verb

To flow out, to proceed from, to come out or from.

“The water issued forth from the spring.”

Verb

To rush out, to sally forth.

“The men issued from the town and attacked the besiegers.”

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: August 18, 2025 (#1521).

See the full page for that puzzle: August 18, 2025 (#1521).

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

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How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How ISSUE performs as a guess

ISSUE 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 83.0% of games, misses completely in 17.0%, and leaves about 207 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,120 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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___E I in the 1st position and E in the 5th position I__U_ I in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _S__E S in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe ISSUE 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.

4.24 Entropy (bits)
207 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.3% 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 ISSUE 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,120 Rank among openers
Opening with ISSUE left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,120 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
668
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
340
6 guesses
36
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:
EISU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
26%
All gray
17%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I N G
I S S U E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ISSUE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ISSUE can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

403 answers
379 answers
271 answers
166 answers
155 answers
143 answers
93 answers
79 answers
75 answers
70 answers
68 answers
48 answers
43 answers
35 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1S1S1U1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

CAROL ALTER TRAIN TRULY CARLE SLART

Strategy after playing ISSUE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ISSUE:

17% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
16% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
11% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.0% →
CAROL 5.77 bits
16.0% →
ALTER 5.39 bits
11.4% →
TRAIN 5.18 bits
7.0% →
TRULY 4.58 bits
6.5% →
CARLE 4.38 bits
6.0% →
SLART 5.03 bits
3.9% →
DINER 4.72 bits
3.3% →
SLART 4.42 bits
3.2% →
STINK 4.46 bits
2.9% →
TRINE 3.47 bits

Research on ISSUE

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

Optimal play

Opening with ISSUE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,160 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 ISSUE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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 IHSHOO.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ISSUE is a kind of content or periodical.

Synonyms take number matter cut return EVENT

Opposites recall

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ISSUE sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 170 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A2); among the first words English learners study.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 38 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).

In a sentence

That is not the issue.
© tatoeba.org contributor Adelpa (CC BY 2.0 FR)
That could be the issue.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).