5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier opener

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.

Open Solver with PANIC Open Word Finder

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

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: January 15, 2022 (#210).

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

Wordle Observatory

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About the project

Add an anonymous result and difficulty rating to the public, aggregate research dataset.

We send only this answer word for puzzle verification, the puzzle number, result, difficulty vote, Hard Mode flag, timezone and a random one-puzzle receipt token. The Observatory stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier. The puzzle-specific receipt prevents duplicate submissions and permits withdrawal; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. See the privacy details.

How PANIC performs as a guess

PANIC is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,358 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.6% of games, misses completely in 19.4%, and leaves about 174 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete v5 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P__I_ P in the 1st position and I in the 4th position _A__C A in the 2nd position and C in the 5th position

Try next

SOREL ALERT STILE STOLE SORED CHORE
Words starting with P Words ending with C

First-turn measures

4.75 Entropy (bits)
174 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opener: v5 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.9% Win rate
0.69 Volatility
#2,115 v5 opener rank
In the complete v5 snapshot, PANIC ranks #2,115 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
979
4 guesses
1,125
5 guesses
178
6 guesses
13
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
28%
All gray
19%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
C A D D Y
M A N I C
P A N I C

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

101 possible patterns. Top outcomes:

458
279
198
131
122
121
79
74
70
62
41
39
39
38
36
35
30
30
26
23
21
21
21
19
18
14
14
13
13
13

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PANIC:

19% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
12% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
8% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.4% →
SOREL 6.07 bits
11.8% →
ALERT 5.56 bits
8.4% →
STILE 5.38 bits
5.6% →
STOLE 4.71 bits
5.2% →
SORED 5.24 bits
5.1% →
CHORE 5.33 bits
3.4% →
SLART 4.77 bits
3.1% →
SOGER 4.45 bits
3.0% →
STOLE 5.12 bits
2.6% →
GRADE 4.66 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1N1I1C3
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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