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

ZILLA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A subdivision of a province or state

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 ZILLA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZILLA 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 71.7% of games, misses completely in 28.3%, and leaves about 349 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,686 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe ZILLA 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.

3.61 Entropy (bits)
349 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 9% of evaluated openers
2.34 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZILLA 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,686 Rank among openers
Opening with ZILLA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.88 average. It ranks #13,686 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
645
4 guesses
1,277
5 guesses
369
6 guesses
27
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
21%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

ZILLA can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

673 answers
485 answers
244 answers
146 answers
145 answers
141 answers
83 answers
49 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
29 answers
25 answers
23 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10I1L1L1A1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing ZILLA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZILLA:

28% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
20% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.3%
TORSE 6.24 bits
20.4%
TARSE 5.60 bits
10.3%
TRINE 5.61 bits
6.1%
REACT 4.78 bits
6.1%
CORSE 4.83 bits
5.9%
RONTE 4.78 bits
3.5%
NADIR 4.64 bits
2.1%
CRISE 4.17 bits
1.6%
SATEM 4.20 bits
1.6%
MORNE 4.70 bits

Research on ZILLA

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZILLA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,979 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with ZILLA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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 ZIHLUH.

Rhymes with VILLA

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZILLA 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).