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

FAIRS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɛəz//fɛɹz//fɛɚz/

Noun

plural of fair

Interjection

Fair enough; fair's fair.

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it FEHRZ.

Rhymes with TEARS CARES BEARS PAIRS WEARS

Related meanings

Synonyms just average CLEAN honest reasonable fairly

Opposites unfair foul ugly extraordinary

In a sentence

Do you like going to fairs?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Smart and stupid people go to trade fairs.
© tatoeba.org contributor megamanenm (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use FAIRS 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 FAIRS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FAIRS 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 86.4% of games, misses completely in 13.6%, and leaves about 131 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,349 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 FAIRS 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.

4.95 Entropy (bits)
131 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAIRS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#4,349 Rank among openers
Opening with FAIRS left 2 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,349 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
920
4 guesses
1,120
5 guesses
226
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
35%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

FAIRS can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

325 answers
218 answers
188 answers
167 answers
157 answers
133 answers
102 answers
101 answers
79 answers
66 answers
55 answers
54 answers
54 answers
46 answers
42 answers
41 answers
36 answers
34 answers
34 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1I1R1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing FAIRS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAIRS:

14% chance
Suggested:
CLOTE
9% chance
Suggested:
ROUET
8% chance
Suggested:
ALATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.6% →
CLOTE 5.70 bits
9.1% →
ROUET 5.15 bits
7.9% →
ALATE 5.47 bits
7.0% →
STOLE 5.26 bits
6.6% →
CONTE 5.17 bits
5.6% →
TONEY 4.61 bits
4.3% →
THALE 4.78 bits
4.2% →
CRONE 4.40 bits
3.3% →
CLONE 4.82 bits
2.8% →
PORTE 3.93 bits

Research on FAIRS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAIRS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,570 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 FAIRS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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
FAIRS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).