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

HARED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of hare

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 HARED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HARED 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 87.1% of games, misses completely in 12.9%, and leaves about 108 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,160 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 HARED 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.

5.26 Entropy (bits)
108 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 94% of evaluated openers
0.69 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HARED 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,160 Rank among openers
Opening with HARED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,160 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
947
4 guesses
1,117
5 guesses
199
6 guesses
10
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:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
35%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

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

306 answers
192 answers
158 answers
122 answers
113 answers
109 answers
102 answers
98 answers
85 answers
83 answers
71 answers
61 answers
48 answers
45 answers
44 answers
35 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1R1E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing HARED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HARED:

13% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
8% chance
Suggested:
STILE
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.9%
SOILY 5.71 bits
8.1%
STILE 5.26 bits
6.7%
SLANT 5.22 bits
5.1%
PRINT 4.83 bits
4.8%
SONLY 4.70 bits
4.6%
SLANT 5.14 bits
4.3%
TOUCH 5.01 bits
4.1%
SOILY 3.49 bits
3.6%
TRIPE 4.41 bits
3.5%
SLANT 4.46 bits

Research on HARED

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

Optimal play

Opening with HARED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #786 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 HARED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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 HEHRD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HARED is a kind of game or run.

Synonyms rabbit

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HARED sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.8 of 5).

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