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

PAIRE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete form of pair.

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 PAIRE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PAIRE 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 90.7% of games, misses completely in 9.3%, and leaves about 79 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #644 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 PAIRE 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.

5.65 Entropy (bits)
79 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.7% Avg ruled out
In the top 1% for first-turn entropy
0.30 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PAIRE 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#644 Rank among openers
Opening with PAIRE left 2 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 3.59 average. It ranks #644 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
88
3 guesses
1,017
4 guesses
1,042
5 guesses
184
6 guesses
21
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
3 vowels
Common:
AEIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
45%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

PAIRE can come back 133 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

220 answers
144 answers
138 answers
119 answers
114 answers
106 answers
105 answers
87 answers
81 answers
75 answers
67 answers
58 answers
41 answers
36 answers
36 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1I1R1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing PAIRE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PAIRE:

9% chance
Suggested:
SLOTH
6% chance
Suggested:
TWEEN
6% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.3%
SLOTH 5.50 bits
6.1%
TWEEN 5.11 bits
5.8%
SLANT 5.24 bits
5.0%
OUTER 4.08 bits
4.8%
SONLY 4.55 bits
4.5%
SONLY 4.48 bits
4.4%
WORST 4.68 bits
3.7%
SOULY 4.66 bits
3.4%
SLANT 4.70 bits
3.2%
SLANT 4.64 bits

Research on PAIRE

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

Optimal play

Opening with PAIRE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #222 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 PAIRE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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 PEHR. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PAIRE 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).