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

LIMEN

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A liminal point; the threshold of a physiological or psychological response.

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

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Latin līmen (“threshold”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms threshold

Use LIMEN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% 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 LIMEN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LIMEN 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 85.4% of games, misses completely in 14.6%, and leaves about 138 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,423 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 LIMEN 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.

5.02 Entropy (bits)
138 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LIMEN 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,423 Rank among openers
Opening with LIMEN left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,423 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
924
4 guesses
1,149
5 guesses
190
6 guesses
19

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
29%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

LIMEN can come back 110 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

347 answers
304 answers
167 answers
126 answers
119 answers
105 answers
104 answers
71 answers
68 answers
62 answers
61 answers
60 answers
59 answers
43 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1I1M3E1N1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LIMEN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LIMEN:

15% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
13% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6% →
ROAST 6.13 bits
12.8% →
ROAST 5.73 bits
7.0% →
ROAST 5.09 bits
5.3% →
ROAST 4.38 bits
5.0% →
DAUNT 5.11 bits
4.4% →
TEASE 4.63 bits
4.4% →
STAIR 5.22 bits
3.0% →
COAST 4.97 bits
2.9% →
SHART 4.31 bits
2.6% →
ERASE 4.58 bits

Research on LIMEN

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

Optimal play

Opening with LIMEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,310 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #939 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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
LIMEN 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).