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

LIANG

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Synonym of tael, a former Chinese unit of weight (about 40 g) and a related unit of silver currency.

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 LIANG performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LIANG 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 81.5% of games, misses completely in 18.5%, and leaves about 156 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,133 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe LIANG 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.

4.89 Entropy (bits)
156 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LIANG 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
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,133 Rank among openers
Opening with LIANG left 1 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 3.62 average. It ranks #2,133 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
950
4 guesses
1,149
5 guesses
171
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:
AILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
31%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

LIANG can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

439 answers
224 answers
156 answers
147 answers
143 answers
116 answers
107 answers
79 answers
65 answers
64 answers
53 answers
52 answers
51 answers
48 answers
40 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1I1A1N1G2
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing LIANG

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LIANG:

18% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
9% chance
Suggested:
CATER
7% chance
Suggested:
SOCLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.5%
TORSE 6.30 bits
9.4%
CATER 5.50 bits
6.6%
SOCLE 4.89 bits
6.2%
TRICE 5.51 bits
6.0%
STORE 5.11 bits
4.9%
POTAE 4.50 bits
4.5%
TORSE 5.11 bits
3.3%
SCOTE 4.37 bits
2.7%
ROUGE 5.09 bits
2.7%
STILE 4.28 bits

Research on LIANG

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

Optimal play

Opening with LIANG, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,972 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 LIANG can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 LYANG.

Rhymes with CHANG SLANG THANG CLANG STANG

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LIANG sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang are an unbeatable team.
© tatoeba.org contributor FeuDRenais (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).