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

LAYED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with LAYED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of lay

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 LAYED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LAYED 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 86.1% of games, misses completely in 13.9%, and leaves about 128 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,276 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

L___D L in the 1st position and D in the 5th position L__E_ L in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _A__D A in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position LA_ED L in the 1st position, A in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and D in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in LAYED.

First-turn measures

All four describe LAYED 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.

5.05 Entropy (bits)
128 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 86% of evaluated openers
0.90 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LAYED 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,276 Rank among openers
Opening with LAYED 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,276 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
853
4 guesses
1,200
5 guesses
222
6 guesses
14
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:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
31%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

LAYED can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

329 answers
256 answers
167 answers
134 answers
122 answers
117 answers
107 answers
105 answers
83 answers
70 answers
55 answers
48 answers
48 answers
41 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
30 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1A1Y4E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

COURT CRISE TRASH SENOR SHART NOISY

Strategy after playing LAYED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LAYED:

14% chance
Suggested:
COURT
11% chance
Suggested:
CRISE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRASH

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.9% →
COURT 6.07 bits
10.8% →
CRISE 5.38 bits
7.0% →
TRASH 5.22 bits
5.6% →
SENOR 4.40 bits
5.1% →
SHART 4.96 bits
4.9% →
NOISY 4.36 bits
4.5% →
CLOUT 4.57 bits
4.4% →
COAST 4.27 bits
3.5% →
CRINE 4.07 bits
2.9% →
STOLE 4.36 bits

Research on LAYED

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

Optimal play

Opening with LAYED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,511 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 LAYED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69; proven optimal play reaches 3.66. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 LAYEHD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LAYED is a kind of song or poem.

Synonyms PLACE put set position pose secular

Opposites professional sacred

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LAYED sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).