PANIC
Yes, PANIC was the Wordle answer on January 15, 2022 (Wordle #210).
As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈpænɪk/[ˈpʰænɪk]/ˈpeə̯nɪk/
- Adjective
-
Of fear, fright, etc: overwhelming or sudden.
- Adjective
-
Pertaining to or resulting from overwhelming fear or fright.
- Noun
-
Overwhelming fear or fright, often affecting groups of people or animals; (countable) an instance of this; a fright, a scare.
- Noun
-
Ellipsis of kernel panic (“on Unix-derived operating systems: an action taken by the operating system when it cannot recover from a fatal error”); (by extension) any computer system crash.
Alternative forms: panick
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 15, 2022 (#210).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 15, 2022 (#210).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How PANIC performs as a guess
PANIC 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 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 174 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,115 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PANIC 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PANIC 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches PANIC in 5 guesses. See the trap-family guide for similar endgames.
Feedback distribution
PANIC can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PANIC; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PANIC
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PANIC.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PANIC:
Research on PANIC
Game-tree analysis and word research for PANIC, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PANIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,668 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #794 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, PANIC is a kind of fear or anxiety.
Synonyms terror SCARE
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- PANIC sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 18 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 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 46 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (4.0 of 5).
In a sentence
This is no time to panic.
You don't need to panic.
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).