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

FIRED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfaɪ̯əd//ˈfaɪ̯ɚd//ˈfaɪ̯ɹ̩d/

Adjective

dismissed, terminated from employment.

Adjective

Heated in a furnace, kiln, etc., to become permanently hardened.

Verb

simple past and past participle of fire

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 FIRED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FIRED 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 81.9% of games, misses completely in 18.1%, and leaves about 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,436 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 FIRED 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
164 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 75% of evaluated openers
1.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FIRED 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,436 Rank among openers
Opening with FIRED left 1 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,436 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
938
4 guesses
1,155
5 guesses
179
6 guesses
11
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
34%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

FIRED can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

429 answers
291 answers
168 answers
161 answers
123 answers
100 answers
90 answers
72 answers
70 answers
69 answers
56 answers
55 answers
53 answers
37 answers
30 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4I1R1E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing FIRED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FIRED:

18% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
12% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
7% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.1%
SAULT 5.90 bits
12.3%
SLATE 5.82 bits
7.1%
COAST 5.48 bits
6.8%
SLANT 5.65 bits
5.2%
PEART 4.79 bits
4.2%
ROAST 3.58 bits
3.8%
SLANT 4.55 bits
3.0%
SALTY 4.32 bits
2.9%
SAUCY 4.60 bits
2.9%
SLANT 4.52 bits

Research on FIRED

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

Optimal play

Opening with FIRED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,845 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 FIRED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, 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.

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with TIRED HIRED WIRED

Related meanings

Synonyms dismissed discharged unemployed

Opposites employed

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FIRED sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 43 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

What were you fired for?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I can get you fired.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).