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

LEESE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /liːz/

Verb

To lose.

Verb

To destroy.

Alternative forms: lese, lease

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

Etymology

From Middle English lesen, from Old English *lēosan (only attested in compounds: belēosan, forlēosan, etc.), from Proto-West Germanic *leusan, from Proto-Germanic *leusaną (“to lose”), from Proto-Indo-European *lews- (“to cut; sever; separate; loosen; lose”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it LEES.

Rhymes with PIECE PEACE LEASE CEASE NIECE

Use LEESE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.2% 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 LEESE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LEESE 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 73.3% of games, misses completely in 26.7%, and leaves about 257 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,447 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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 LEESE 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.

4.20 Entropy (bits)
257 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LEESE 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,447 Rank among openers
Opening with LEESE left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,447 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
715
4 guesses
1,243
5 guesses
334
6 guesses
22

Composition

3/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
40%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

LEESE can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

637 answers
252 answers
211 answers
172 answers
172 answers
102 answers
76 answers
64 answers
62 answers
58 answers
53 answers
41 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1E1E1S1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing LEESE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LEESE:

27% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
11% chance
Suggested:
ALLOT
9% chance
Suggested:
STAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.7% →
TRAIN 5.99 bits
10.6% →
ALLOT 5.03 bits
8.9% →
STAIN 5.04 bits
7.2% →
ORATE 4.37 bits
7.2% →
OATER 4.53 bits
4.3% →
RAINY 4.56 bits
3.2% →
TIARE 4.43 bits
2.7% →
STALL 4.26 bits
2.6% →
PRATE 3.87 bits
2.4% →
BAILE 3.97 bits

Research on LEESE

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

Optimal play

Opening with LEESE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,306 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 LEESE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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
LEESE 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.

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).