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

RILLY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

Pronunciation spelling of really.

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 RILLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RILLY 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 79.8% of games, misses completely in 20.2%, and leaves about 240 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,412 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 RILLY 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.

4.21 Entropy (bits)
240 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 33% of evaluated openers
1.74 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RILLY 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,412 Rank among openers
Opening with RILLY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,412 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
792
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
286
6 guesses
26
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:
ILR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
32%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

RILLY can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

479 answers
437 answers
221 answers
198 answers
159 answers
98 answers
76 answers
57 answers
51 answers
49 answers
47 answers
46 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1I1L1L1Y4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing RILLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RILLY:

20% chance
Suggested:
STANE
18% chance
Suggested:
STOAE
9% chance
Suggested:
STOAE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.2%
STANE 6.21 bits
18.4%
STOAE 5.58 bits
9.3%
STOAE 5.30 bits
8.3%
STANE 5.53 bits
6.7%
DANSE 4.81 bits
4.1%
PRATE 4.67 bits
3.2%
CONTE 4.62 bits
2.4%
SLANE 4.51 bits
2.1%
BLAER 4.44 bits
2.1%
CARER 4.08 bits

Research on RILLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with RILLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,020 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 RILLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 RIHLEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RILLY 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).