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

LIMAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with LIMAN Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /lɪˈmɑn/

Noun

A wide estuary formed as a lagoon at the mouth of one or more rivers, where flow is constrained by a bar of sediments (created by either the current of a sea or a sediment-saturated river), especially in the Black Sea region.

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 LIMAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LIMAN 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 82.1% of games, misses completely in 17.9%, and leaves about 161 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,206 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

L___N L in the 1st position and N in the 5th position L__A_ L in the 1st position and A in the 4th position _I__N I in the 2nd position and N in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe LIMAN 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.

4.84 Entropy (bits)
161 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 74% of evaluated openers
1.11 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LIMAN 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
#2,206 Rank among openers
Opening with LIMAN 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 #2,206 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
962
4 guesses
1,134
5 guesses
178
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
25%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

LIMAN can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
294 answers
156 answers
130 answers
128 answers
110 answers
89 answers
76 answers
69 answers
63 answers
60 answers
53 answers
48 answers
48 answers
46 answers
31 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1I1M3A1N1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TORSE CRATE SOLER TRICE ROUTE STALE

Strategy after playing LIMAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LIMAN:

18% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
12% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
7% chance
Suggested:
SOLER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.9% →
TORSE 6.33 bits
12.4% →
CRATE 5.73 bits
6.6% →
SOLER 4.76 bits
5.5% →
TRICE 5.47 bits
5.4% →
ROUTE 5.27 bits
4.6% →
STALE 4.67 bits
3.7% →
PORTE 4.51 bits
3.2% →
TRONE 4.52 bits
2.9% →
TARSE 4.39 bits
2.7% →
STIRE 4.25 bits

Research on LIMAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with LIMAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,348 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #729 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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

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

Rhymes with TIMON HYMEN

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LIMAN is a kind of lagoon.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LIMAN 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).