LYING
Yes, LYING was the Wordle answer on September 19, 2021 (Wordle #92).
As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈlaɪ.ɪŋ/
- Verb
-
present participle and gerund of lie (“to rest in a horizontal position”)
- Noun
-
The act of one who lies, or keeps low to the ground.
- Verb
-
present participle and gerund of lie (“to intentionally give false information”)
- Noun
-
An act or telling a lie or falsehood; the practice of telling lies.
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: September 19, 2021 (#92).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 19, 2021 (#92).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How LYING performs as a guess
LYING is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 73.5% of games, misses completely in 26.5%, and leaves about 246 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,933 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe LYING 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How LYING 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches LYING in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
LYING can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for LYING; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing LYING
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to LYING.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing LYING:
Research on LYING
Game-tree analysis and word research for LYING, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with LYING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,242 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,182 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 LYIHNG.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, LYING is a kind of misconduct.
Synonyms fabrication
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- LYING sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 47 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (3.0 of 5).
In a sentence
I was lying to you.
One of you is lying.
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).