CARES
CARES is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /kɛɹz//kɛəz//keːz/
- Verb
-
third-person singular simple present indicative of care
- Noun
-
plural of care
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it KEHRZ.
Rhymes with TEARS BEARS PAIRS WEARS HAIRS
Related meanings
Synonyms like deal wish attention charge fear
In a sentence
No one cares about that.
No one cares about you.
Use CARES in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 96.5% of possible answers.
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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How CARES performs as a guess
Wordle accepts CARES 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 89.7% of games, misses completely in 10.3%, and leaves about 85 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #539 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 CARES 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 CARES 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
Feedback distribution
CARES can come back 127 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 CARES; 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 CARES
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CARES.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing CARES:
Research on CARES
Game-tree analysis and word research for CARES, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with CARES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #179 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 CARES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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
- CARES sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 25 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
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).