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

LATED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Belated; too late; also, overtaken by night; delayed.

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

Use LATED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.9% 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 LATED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LATED 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 88.7% of games, misses completely in 11.3%, and leaves about 98 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,047 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 LATED 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.

5.40 Entropy (bits)
98 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LATED 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,047 Rank among openers
Opening with LATED 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,047 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
77
3 guesses
968
4 guesses
1,138
5 guesses
157
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AELT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
33%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

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

270 answers
197 answers
160 answers
126 answers
118 answers
102 answers
89 answers
87 answers
83 answers
79 answers
62 answers
56 answers
50 answers
43 answers
43 answers
38 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1A1T1E1D2
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing LATED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LATED:

11% chance
Suggested:
SCION
8% chance
Suggested:
SNORE
7% chance
Suggested:
SHOUT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.3% →
SCION 5.64 bits
8.3% →
SNORE 5.35 bits
6.7% →
SHOUT 5.40 bits
5.3% →
CRASH 5.11 bits
4.9% →
SOILY 4.54 bits
4.3% →
SENOR 4.29 bits
3.7% →
FLAIL 4.05 bits
3.6% →
SCARE 4.59 bits
3.5% →
RAYON 4.18 bits
3.3% →
SHIRE 4.80 bits

Research on LATED

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

Optimal play

Opening with LATED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #136 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 LATED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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
LATED 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 (3.5 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).