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

LAURA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈlɔɹə//ˈlɔːɹə/

Noun

A number of hermitages or cells in the same neighborhood occupied by anchorites who were under the same superior

Noun

A cluster of cells or caves for hermits, with a church and sometimes a refectory at the centre.

Alternative forms: lavra

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

Etymology

From Late Latin saint's name Laura, from the feminine form of laurus (“laurel tree”). A post-classical name made famous by Petrarch's sonnets to Laura in the fourteenth century.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with FLORA TORAH MORRA

In a sentence

Laura, are you a teacher?
© tatoeba.org contributor CN (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Laura decided to come out.
© tatoeba.org contributor marco87 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use LAURA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% 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 LAURA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LAURA 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,642 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 LAURA 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.

4.54 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LAURA 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#9,642 Rank among openers
Opening with LAURA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,642 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
828
4 guesses
1,146
5 guesses
294
6 guesses
30

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ALRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
30%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

LAURA can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
301 answers
198 answers
156 answers
133 answers
131 answers
122 answers
116 answers
69 answers
66 answers
57 answers
55 answers
38 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1A1U1R1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing LAURA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LAURA:

18% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
13% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
8% chance
Suggested:
NOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.8% →
SIENT 6.15 bits
12.6% →
TOISE 5.29 bits
8.3% →
NOISE 4.98 bits
6.5% →
STANE 5.43 bits
5.6% →
STIME 4.77 bits
5.5% →
STANE 4.59 bits
5.1% →
BEAST 4.50 bits
4.9% →
CONTE 4.83 bits
2.9% →
PORTE 4.07 bits
2.8% →
SURER 4.64 bits

Research on LAURA

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

Optimal play

Opening with LAURA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,483 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,745 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
LAURA sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 17 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).