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

SARIS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of sari

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 SARIS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SARIS 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 84.9% of games, misses completely in 15.1%, and leaves about 150 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,291 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 SARIS 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.

4.73 Entropy (bits)
150 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 67% of evaluated openers
1.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SARIS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#8,291 Rank among openers
Opening with SARIS left 3 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,291 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
866
4 guesses
1,154
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
29
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
39%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

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

359 answers
219 answers
207 answers
207 answers
143 answers
143 answers
109 answers
101 answers
67 answers
65 answers
61 answers
57 answers
55 answers
45 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1R1I1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Strategy after playing SARIS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SARIS:

15% chance
Suggested:
CLOTE
9% chance
Suggested:
TONER
9% chance
Suggested:
LITHE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.1%
CLOTE 5.76 bits
9.2%
TONER 4.98 bits
8.7%
LITHE 5.13 bits
8.7%
ALATE 5.44 bits
6.0%
TRACE 4.72 bits
6.0%
TONEY 4.59 bits
4.6%
CLOTE 4.73 bits
4.3%
CLINE 4.17 bits
2.8%
PLATE 4.38 bits
2.7%
CONTE 4.53 bits

Research on SARIS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SARIS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #8,998 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,144 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 SAHREEZ.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SARIS is a kind of dress.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SARIS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).