PLAID
Yes, PLAID was the Wordle answer on June 11, 2025 (Wordle #1453).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /pled//plad//plæd/
- Noun
-
A type of twilled woollen cloth, often with a tartan or chequered pattern.
- Noun
-
A length of such material used as a piece of clothing, formerly worn in the Scottish Highlands and other parts of northern Britain and remaining as an item of ceremonial dress worn by members of Scottish pipe bands.
- Adjective
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Having a pattern or colors which resemble a Scottish tartan; checkered or marked with bars or stripes at right angles to one another.
- Verb
-
simple past and past participle of play
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Scots plaid, of uncertain origin; perhaps from a past participle form of ply. Scottish Gaelic plaide (“blanket”) is probably a borrowing from Scots.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it PLAD.
In a sentence
Tom likes to wear plaid.
Tom is wearing a plaid shirt.
Use PLAID in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% of possible answers.
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: June 11, 2025 (#1453).
See the full page for that puzzle: June 11, 2025 (#1453).
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 →PLAID in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #57
Reveal this appearance's category
PLAID appeared in PATTERNS (green group).
How PLAID performs as a guess
PLAID is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 167 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #641 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PLAID 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 PLAID 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 PLAID in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PLAID can come back 112 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 PLAID; 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 PLAID
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PLAID.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PLAID:
Research on PLAID
Game-tree analysis and word research for PLAID, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PLAID, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #674 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 PLAID can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, 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
- PLAID sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.5 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).