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

HAIRS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of hair

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 HAIRS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HAIRS 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 88.5% of games, misses completely in 11.5%, and leaves about 111 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,611 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 HAIRS 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.

5.16 Entropy (bits)
111 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.79 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAIRS 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,611 Rank among openers
Opening with HAIRS left 2 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,611 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
997
4 guesses
1,082
5 guesses
202
6 guesses
17
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:
AIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
33%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

HAIRS can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

274 answers
216 answers
178 answers
147 answers
134 answers
122 answers
105 answers
77 answers
70 answers
68 answers
59 answers
55 answers
53 answers
51 answers
45 answers
41 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1I1R1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing HAIRS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAIRS:

12% chance
Suggested:
OLDEN
9% chance
Suggested:
TONER
7% chance
Suggested:
ALATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.5%
OLDEN 5.76 bits
9.1%
TONER 4.97 bits
7.5%
ALATE 5.35 bits
6.2%
TILDE 5.18 bits
5.6%
SPENT 5.28 bits
5.1%
TONEY 4.63 bits
4.4%
CLADE 4.40 bits
3.2%
STALE 4.82 bits
2.9%
CLONE 4.75 bits
2.9%
CONTE 5.04 bits

Research on HAIRS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAIRS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,925 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 HAIRS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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

One syllable Say it HEHRZ.

Rhymes with TEARS CARES BEARS PAIRS WEARS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HAIRS is a kind of cover or amount.

Synonyms fuzz

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HAIRS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 6 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

In a sentence

I'm not trying to split hairs.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)
They've got us by the short hairs.
© tatoeba.org contributor mccarras (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).