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

LIARS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of liar

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

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with FIRES TIRES WIRES TYRES HIRES

In a sentence

I really don't like liars.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)
That's the truth of liars.
© tatoeba.org contributor maaster (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use LIARS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.1% 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 LIARS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LIARS 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 90.9% of games, misses completely in 9.1%, and leaves about 94 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,353 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 LIARS 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.

5.35 Entropy (bits)
94 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LIARS 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,353 Rank among openers
Opening with LIARS 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,353 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
1,000
4 guesses
1,083
5 guesses
186
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AILRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
30%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

LIARS can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

216 answers
215 answers
153 answers
131 answers
128 answers
102 answers
102 answers
98 answers
79 answers
68 answers
56 answers
55 answers
54 answers
49 answers
48 answers
48 answers
42 answers
40 answers
38 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1I1A1R1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing LIARS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LIARS:

9% chance
Suggested:
CONTE
9% chance
Suggested:
CONTE
6% chance
Suggested:
CONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.1% →
CONTE 5.70 bits
9.0% →
CONTE 5.31 bits
6.4% →
CONTE 5.44 bits
5.5% →
SPENT 5.30 bits
5.4% →
BOULE 4.87 bits
4.3% →
CONTE 5.35 bits
4.3% →
POTAE 4.47 bits
4.1% →
TAPER 4.35 bits
3.3% →
CONTE 4.55 bits
2.9% →
CONTE 4.36 bits

Research on LIARS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LIARS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,709 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #497 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
LIARS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (4.1 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).