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

NARES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: [ˈnɛə.ɹiz][ˈneɹiːz][ˈnæɹiːz]

Noun

plural of naris

Noun

plural of nare

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it NARZ.

Use NARES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.7% 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 NARES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NARES 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 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 79 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,366 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 NARES 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.

5.54 Entropy (bits)
79 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NARES 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#1,366 Rank among openers
Opening with NARES left 3 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,366 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
77
3 guesses
981
4 guesses
1,098
5 guesses
178
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AENRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
32%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

NARES can come back 111 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

229 answers
144 answers
119 answers
101 answers
97 answers
97 answers
96 answers
91 answers
77 answers
72 answers
72 answers
70 answers
63 answers
58 answers
55 answers
50 answers
44 answers
43 answers
38 answers
36 answers
36 answers
35 answers
31 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1R1E1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing NARES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NARES:

10% chance
Suggested:
MOULT
6% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
5% chance
Suggested:
SPILT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.6% →
MOULT 5.44 bits
6.0% →
TOILE 5.40 bits
5.0% →
SPILT 5.09 bits
4.2% →
TONIC 4.95 bits
4.1% →
TOILE 3.50 bits
4.1% →
ATOLL 5.00 bits
4.0% →
DROIT 4.80 bits
3.8% →
DEALT 4.91 bits
3.2% →
TRICE 4.44 bits
3.0% →
CRAFT 4.31 bits

Research on NARES

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

Optimal play

Opening with NARES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #448 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 NARES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
NARES 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).