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

CLIES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of cly

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 CLIES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CLIES 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 87.3% of games, misses completely in 12.7%, and leaves about 105 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #840 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe CLIES 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.

5.33 Entropy (bits)
105 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 96% of evaluated openers
0.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CLIES 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#840 Rank among openers
Opening with CLIES left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #840 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
77
3 guesses
993
4 guesses
1,100
5 guesses
170
6 guesses
12
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
38%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

CLIES can come back 118 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

300 answers
214 answers
153 answers
125 answers
112 answers
109 answers
98 answers
77 answers
56 answers
54 answers
51 answers
49 answers
45 answers
45 answers
44 answers
42 answers
41 answers
37 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CLIES:

13% chance
Suggested:
MOURN
9% chance
Suggested:
TRADE
6% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.7%
MOURN 5.62 bits
9.1%
TRADE 5.60 bits
6.5%
ROAST 5.26 bits
5.3%
ROATE 4.05 bits
4.7%
DROIT 5.02 bits
4.6%
ROAST 4.86 bits
4.2%
ATOLL 4.78 bits
3.3%
LADLE 4.37 bits
2.4%
TRONE 4.28 bits
2.3%
ROANY 4.78 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3L1I1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

The science of CLIES

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about CLIES — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with CLIES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses — rank #593 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best — rank #483 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.62 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it KLYZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.