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

NIHIL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NIHIL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈnɪ.hɪl//ˈniː(h)ɪl//ˈnaɪ(h)ɪl/

Noun

A nihil dicit.

Noun

nothingness, nonbeing

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 NIHIL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NIHIL 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 69.8% of games, misses completely in 30.2%, and leaves about 310 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,534 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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.

N___L N in the 1st position and L in the 5th position N__I_ N in the 1st position and I in the 4th position _I__L I in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe NIHIL 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.

3.91 Entropy (bits)
310 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NIHIL 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#11,534 Rank among openers
Opening with NIHIL left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,534 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
30
3 guesses
786
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
284
6 guesses
43
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
2 vowels
Common:
ILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
22%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

NIHIL can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

716 answers
280 answers
240 answers
197 answers
112 answers
84 answers
81 answers
71 answers
67 answers
49 answers
41 answers
41 answers
38 answers
33 answers
32 answers
28 answers
28 answers
23 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1I1H4I1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

ORATE SOARE ROATE CARTE PRATE OATER

Strategy after playing NIHIL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NIHIL:

30% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
12% chance
Suggested:
SOARE
10% chance
Suggested:
ROATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.2% →
ORATE 6.14 bits
11.8% →
SOARE 5.41 bits
10.1% →
ROATE 5.48 bits
8.3% →
CARTE 5.77 bits
4.7% →
PRATE 5.07 bits
3.5% →
OATER 4.65 bits
3.4% →
DORSE 4.65 bits
3.0% →
TRONE 4.41 bits
2.8% →
CARET 5.06 bits
2.1% →
COATE 4.42 bits

Research on NIHIL

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

Optimal play

Opening with NIHIL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,289 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,426 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 NIHHUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, NIHIL is a kind of nothing.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NIHIL sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).