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

NARAS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A spiny shrub, Acanthosicyos horridus, growing in Namibia and the Kalahari Desert, or the melon-like fruit that it produces.

Alternative forms: nara, 'naras, narra

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

Etymology

From Khoekhoe !naras (“naras fruit”), !narab (“naras plant”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use NARAS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% 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 NARAS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NARAS 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 82.3% of games, misses completely in 17.7%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,797 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 NARAS 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.

4.62 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NARAS 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,797 Rank among openers
Opening with NARAS left 4 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,797 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
883
4 guesses
1,167
5 guesses
237
6 guesses
16

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
27%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

NARAS can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

423 answers
270 answers
207 answers
190 answers
125 answers
98 answers
97 answers
83 answers
67 answers
63 answers
61 answers
60 answers
52 answers
47 answers
46 answers
45 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
11 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1R1A1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing NARAS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NARAS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
9% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.7% →
TOILE 6.10 bits
11.3% →
TOILE 5.19 bits
8.7% →
TOILE 5.48 bits
8.0% →
TOILE 5.39 bits
5.2% →
CLOTE 5.27 bits
4.1% →
BLITE 4.72 bits
4.1% →
TRACE 4.65 bits
3.5% →
THALE 4.69 bits
2.8% →
CLOTE 4.42 bits
2.6% →
TRIDE 4.50 bits

Research on NARAS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NARAS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #7,950 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,857 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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
NARAS 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).