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

RILLS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of rill

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Related meanings

Synonyms run

Use RILLS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How RILLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RILLS 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 82.8% of games, misses completely in 17.2%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,964 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 RILLS 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.

4.40 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RILLS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,964 Rank among openers
Opening with RILLS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,964 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
879
4 guesses
1,156
5 guesses
255
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ILRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
23%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

RILLS can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

411 answers
379 answers
235 answers
185 answers
146 answers
115 answers
89 answers
85 answers
68 answers
54 answers
52 answers
49 answers
48 answers
46 answers
31 answers
31 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1I1L1L1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing RILLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RILLS:

17% chance
Suggested:
COATE
16% chance
Suggested:
COATE
10% chance
Suggested:
STANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.2% →
COATE 5.96 bits
15.9% →
COATE 5.57 bits
9.9% →
STANE 5.59 bits
7.8% →
COATE 5.39 bits
6.1% →
ATONE 5.32 bits
4.8% →
STOAE 5.04 bits
3.7% →
CADET 4.66 bits
3.6% →
CONTE 4.56 bits
2.9% →
STANE 4.60 bits
2.3% →
OATER 4.58 bits

Research on RILLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with RILLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,403 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 RILLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RILLS 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).