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

CLARY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈklɛəɹi/

Noun

clary sage (Salvia sclarea)

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

Etymology

From Middle English clarie, from Anglo-Norman sclaree, from Late or Medieval Latin sclarēia.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KLEHREE.

Rhymes with HARRY MARRY SCARY JERRY TERRY

Use CLARY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% 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 CLARY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CLARY 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 85.9% of games, misses completely in 14.1%, and leaves about 132 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,470 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 CLARY 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.

5.12 Entropy (bits)
132 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CLARY 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,470 Rank among openers
Opening with CLARY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,470 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
1,014
4 guesses
1,067
5 guesses
193
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
42%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

CLARY can come back 117 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

337 answers
297 answers
149 answers
133 answers
127 answers
101 answers
91 answers
88 answers
73 answers
69 answers
44 answers
43 answers
43 answers
42 answers
36 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3L1A1R1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing CLARY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CLARY:

14% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
12% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
6% chance
Suggested:
SIENT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.1% →
SIENT 6.36 bits
12.5% →
TOISE 5.54 bits
6.2% →
SIENT 5.31 bits
5.6% →
POISE 4.59 bits
5.3% →
TOISE 5.12 bits
4.2% →
TASER 4.53 bits
3.8% →
SAUTE 4.53 bits
3.7% →
TOISE 5.17 bits
3.1% →
SHITE 4.78 bits
2.9% →
BIOSE 4.67 bits

Research on CLARY

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

Optimal play

Opening with CLARY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,961 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 #1,176 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
CLARY 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).