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

WILCO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WILCO Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈwɪl.koʊ//ˈwɪl.kəʊ/

Interjection

Indicates agreement and compliance.

“Wilco, Bravo Six Three will take the north road. Bravo Six Four will take the south road, out.”

Noun

A species of South American tree, Anadenanthera colubrina.

Verb

To give the "wilco" indication.

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 WILCO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WILCO 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 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,061 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

W___O W in the 1st position and O in the 5th position W__C_ W in the 1st position and C in the 4th position _I__O I in the 2nd position and O in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in WILCO.

First-turn measures

All four describe WILCO 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.

4.41 Entropy (bits)
220 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 45% of evaluated openers
1.54 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WILCO 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,061 Rank among openers
Opening with WILCO solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,061 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
906
4 guesses
1,175
5 guesses
207
6 guesses
14
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ILO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
23%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

WILCO can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

543 answers
288 answers
222 answers
202 answers
101 answers
98 answers
79 answers
79 answers
63 answers
53 answers
46 answers
39 answers
37 answers
37 answers
34 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4I1L1C3O1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

TARSE PARSE TRINE SENTE CRATE SLATE

Strategy after playing WILCO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WILCO:

23% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
12% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
PARSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.9% →
TARSE 6.39 bits
12.1% →
TARSE 5.44 bits
9.4% →
PARSE 5.32 bits
8.5% →
TRINE 5.64 bits
4.3% →
SENTE 4.37 bits
4.1% →
CRATE 5.56 bits
3.3% →
SLATE 4.35 bits
3.3% →
SLATE 4.68 bits
2.7% →
THANE 4.90 bits
2.2% →
CRANE 4.77 bits

Research on WILCO

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

Optimal play

Opening with WILCO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,472 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,320 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 WIHLKOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WILCO 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).