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

MILDS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of mild

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 MILDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MILDS 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 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,386 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 MILDS 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.

4.41 Entropy (bits)
220 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MILDS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#2,386 Rank among openers
Opening with MILDS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,386 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
960
4 guesses
1,166
5 guesses
169
6 guesses
7
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
1 vowels
Common:
ILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
21%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

MILDS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

544 answers
293 answers
240 answers
163 answers
113 answers
80 answers
73 answers
72 answers
72 answers
63 answers
51 answers
51 answers
43 answers
43 answers
35 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1L1D2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing MILDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MILDS:

23% chance
Suggested:
CARTE
12% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
10% chance
Suggested:
ROATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.9%
CARTE 6.38 bits
12.3%
ROATE 5.71 bits
10.1%
ROATE 5.38 bits
6.9%
TRINE 5.69 bits
4.8%
DRONE 5.37 bits
3.4%
CONTE 4.60 bits
3.1%
ROATE 5.29 bits
3.0%
THALE 4.79 bits
3.0%
TRINE 4.57 bits
2.7%
GLARE 4.55 bits

Research on MILDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MILDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,441 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 MILDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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

One syllable Say it MYLDZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MILDS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (2.8 of 5).

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).