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

LIVES

LIVES 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

Pronunciation: /lɪvz//laɪvz/

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of live

Noun

plural of life

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 LIVES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LIVES 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 83.3% of games, misses completely in 16.7%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,347 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 LIVES 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.

4.72 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 67% of evaluated openers
1.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LIVES 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#7,347 Rank among openers
Opening with LIVES left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,347 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
849
4 guesses
1,160
5 guesses
260
6 guesses
17
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:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
25%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

LIVES can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

396 answers
251 answers
183 answers
162 answers
142 answers
133 answers
119 answers
105 answers
75 answers
71 answers
59 answers
57 answers
56 answers
40 answers
38 answers
31 answers
27 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1I1V4E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LIVES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LIVES:

17% chance
Suggested:
COURT
11% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
8% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.7%
COURT 5.82 bits
10.6%
TRACE 5.73 bits
7.7%
ROAST 5.19 bits
6.8%
ROANY 4.80 bits
6.0%
TRAIN 5.48 bits
5.6%
OATER 4.34 bits
5.0%
ROAST 4.86 bits
4.4%
BEARE 4.45 bits
3.2%
TRINE 4.71 bits
3.0%
MINTY 3.80 bits

Research on LIVES

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

Optimal play

Opening with LIVES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,559 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 LIVES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 LIHVZ.

Rhymes with GIVES

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LIVES is a kind of being or experience.

Synonyms living spirit lifetime animation biography lifespan

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LIVES sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 138 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

This is where he lives.
© tatoeba.org contributor Spamster (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He lives in the city.
© tatoeba.org contributor aka_aj (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).