SWILL
Yes, SWILL was the Wordle answer on February 19, 2022 (Wordle #245).
As an opener, it rules out about 86.5% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /swɪl/
- Noun
-
A mixture of solid and liquid food scraps fed to pigs etc; especially kitchen waste for this purpose.
- Noun
-
Any disgusting or distasteful liquid.
“I cannot believe anyone could drink this swill.”
- Verb
-
To drink (or, rarely, eat) greedily or to excess.
- Verb
-
To wash (something) by flooding with water.
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: February 19, 2022 (#245).
See the full page for that puzzle: February 19, 2022 (#245).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How SWILL performs as a guess
SWILL is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 68.0% of games, misses completely in 32.0%, and leaves about 321 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,834 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SWILL 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SWILL 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SWILL in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SWILL can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SWILL; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SWILL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SWILL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SWILL:
Research on SWILL
Game-tree analysis and word research for SWILL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SWILL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,214 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,449 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SWILL is a kind of feed or give.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SWILL 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.
In a sentence
Where did you buy this horrible swill?
Swill the teapot out with water.
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).