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

PILLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pɪlz/

Noun

plural of pill

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of pill

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 PILLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PILLS 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 69.4% of games, misses completely in 30.6%, and leaves about 309 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,119 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 PILLS 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.

4.07 Entropy (bits)
309 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 26% of evaluated openers
1.87 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PILLS 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,119 Rank among openers
Opening with PILLS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #7,119 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
873
4 guesses
1,197
5 guesses
225
6 guesses
17
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
1 vowels
Common:
ILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
25%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

PILLS can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

726 answers
279 answers
214 answers
209 answers
102 answers
68 answers
62 answers
57 answers
52 answers
51 answers
50 answers
42 answers
35 answers
28 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3I1L1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing PILLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PILLS:

31% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
12% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.6%
ROATE 6.18 bits
11.8%
ROATE 5.70 bits
9.0%
TRINE 5.66 bits
8.8%
ROATE 5.34 bits
4.3%
RONTE 4.72 bits
2.9%
STANE 4.61 bits
2.6%
ROUET 5.13 bits
2.4%
CARET 4.63 bits
2.2%
TRONE 4.73 bits
2.1%
CRANE 4.46 bits

Research on PILLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PILLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,839 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 PILLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 PIHLZ.

Rhymes with BILLS HILLS KILLS MILLS FILLS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PILLS is a kind of thing or dose.

Synonyms tablet tab

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PILLS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 11 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

Do you have your pills?
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Did you take the pills?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (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).