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

STILE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /staɪl/

Noun

A set of one or more steps surmounting a fence or wall, or a narrow gate or contrived passage through a fence or wall, which in either case allows people but not livestock to pass.

Noun

A vertical component of a frame or panel, such as that of a door, window, or ladder.

Verb

Obsolete form of style.

Alternative forms: style

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

Etymology

See the etymology at style.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it STYL.

Rhymes with WHILE STYLE SMILE AISLE GUILE

In a sentence

The hikers climbed over the stile to cross into the next field.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
A weathered wooden stile marked the boundary between the meadow and the forest.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use STILE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.1% 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 STILE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STILE 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 88.1% of games, misses completely in 11.9%, and leaves about 92 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #199 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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 STILE 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.

5.56 Entropy (bits)
92 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STILE 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.

3.57 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#199 Rank among openers
Opening with STILE left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.57 average. It ranks #199 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
94
3 guesses
1,016
4 guesses
1,071
5 guesses
155
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EILST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
41%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

STILE can come back 126 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

283 answers
189 answers
126 answers
119 answers
117 answers
94 answers
91 answers
89 answers
78 answers
66 answers
48 answers
46 answers
38 answers
37 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1I1L1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing STILE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STILE:

12% chance
Suggested:
ACORN
8% chance
Suggested:
CEDAR
5% chance
Suggested:
TROUT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.9% →
ACORN 5.67 bits
7.9% →
CEDAR 5.07 bits
5.3% →
TROUT 5.36 bits
5.0% →
GRACE 4.62 bits
4.9% →
ROANY 4.90 bits
3.9% →
HEART 4.78 bits
3.8% →
RENAL 4.63 bits
3.7% →
NADIR 4.95 bits
3.3% →
ROANY 4.73 bits
2.8% →
DITTO 4.08 bits

Research on STILE

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

Optimal play

Opening with STILE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #175 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.73 guesses at best and is rank #165 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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
STILE sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).