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

THILL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /θɪl/

Noun

One of the two long pieces of wood, extending before a vehicle, between which a horse is hitched; a shaft.

Noun

The shallow stratum of underclay that lies under a seam of coal; the bottom of a coal-seam.

Alternative forms: fill

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

Etymology

From Middle English thille, thylle, from Old English þille (“board; floorboard; plank; stake; pole”), from Proto-West Germanic *þilljā, from Proto-Germanic *þiljǭ (“board; floorboard; deck”), from Proto-Indo-European *tel- (“plank; board”). Cognate with Dutch deel, German Low German Deel (> English deal (“plank”)), German Diele, Swedish tilja, Icelandic þilja. Akin to English theal (“board; plank”). Doublet of deal (etymology 3).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it THIHL.

Rhymes with STILL UNTIL SKILL CHILL DRILL

Use THILL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.9% 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 THILL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts THILL 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 71.9% of games, misses completely in 28.1%, and leaves about 264 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,184 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 THILL 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.

4.28 Entropy (bits)
264 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How THILL 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,184 Rank among openers
Opening with THILL left 2 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 #8,184 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
866
4 guesses
1,169
5 guesses
253
6 guesses
23

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ILT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
31%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

THILL can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

671 answers
237 answers
194 answers
175 answers
116 answers
98 answers
69 answers
67 answers
64 answers
63 answers
50 answers
46 answers
42 answers
37 answers
35 answers
31 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1H4I1L1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing THILL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing THILL:

28% chance
Suggested:
AROSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SOARE
8% chance
Suggested:
SOARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.1% →
AROSE 6.02 bits
9.9% →
SOARE 5.83 bits
8.1% →
SOARE 5.35 bits
7.3% →
RINSE 5.35 bits
4.9% →
PRONE 5.02 bits
4.1% →
CARSE 5.15 bits
2.9% →
SENOR 4.77 bits
2.8% →
RANCE 4.71 bits
2.7% →
RATIO 4.40 bits
2.6% →
CARSE 5.09 bits

Research on THILL

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

Optimal play

Opening with THILL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,822 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,285 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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
THILL 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).