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

WILTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of wilt

Noun

plural of wilt

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WIHLTS.

Rhymes with TILTS KILTS GILTS HILTS

In a sentence

Even when basil wilts, it keeps its aroma.
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Liberty is a possession that grows with use but wilts with disuse.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use WILTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% 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 WILTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WILTS 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 77.9% of games, misses completely in 22.1%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,655 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 WILTS 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.

4.56 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WILTS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,655 Rank among openers
Opening with WILTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,655 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
950
4 guesses
1,161
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ILST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
22%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

WILTS can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

526 answers
230 answers
198 answers
180 answers
155 answers
100 answers
74 answers
68 answers
68 answers
58 answers
57 answers
52 answers
51 answers
51 answers
34 answers
31 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4I1L1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing WILTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WILTS:

22% chance
Suggested:
MORAE
10% chance
Suggested:
RANCE
8% chance
Suggested:
SPARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.1% →
MORAE 6.01 bits
9.6% →
RANCE 5.35 bits
8.3% →
SPARE 5.63 bits
7.6% →
CARET 5.53 bits
6.5% →
CRANE 5.57 bits
4.2% →
ROUET 4.70 bits
3.1% →
PONEY 4.46 bits
2.9% →
TRONE 4.66 bits
2.9% →
CLADE 4.61 bits
2.4% →
SHALE 4.63 bits

Research on WILTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WILTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,849 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,005 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
WILTS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).