SHEER
SHEER is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ʃɪə̯//ʃɪː//ˈʃɪj.ə/
- Adjective
-
Very thin or transparent.
“Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.”
- Adjective
-
Downright; complete; pure.
“I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.”
- Noun
-
A sheer curtain or fabric.
“Use sheers to maximize natural light.”
- Noun
-
The curve of the main deck or gunwale from bow to stern.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Old English sċǣre (“pure, sheer; shining, clear”), from Proto-Germanic *skairiz; supplanted the semantically close shire (dialectal), from Middle English schyre, schire, shire, shir, from Old English sċīr (“clear, bright; brilliant, gleaming, shining, splendid, resplendent; pure”), beside which existed Middle English skyr, from Old Norse skírr (“pure, bright, clear”), both from Proto-Germanic *skīriz (“pure, sheer”), from Proto-Indo-Europea…
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SHIHR.
Rhymes with CLEAR CHEER QUEER STEER SPEAR
Related meanings
Synonyms cut absolute TREND rank PLAIN bold
Opposites THICK incomplete gradual
In a sentence
And yet this is sheer hard work.
It's a sheer waste of time.
Use SHEER in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.7% 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
No completed appearanceNo 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.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →SHEER in Connections
3 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
-
· Puzzle #1092
Reveal this appearance's category
SHEER appeared in TRANSLUCENT, AS FABRIC (yellow group).
-
· Puzzle #978
Reveal this appearance's category
SHEER appeared in DOWNRIGHT (yellow group).
-
· Puzzle #180
Reveal this appearance's category
SHEER appeared in ABSOLUTE (green group).
How SHEER performs as a guess
SHEER 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 174 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,128 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SHEER 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 SHEER 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 SHEER in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SHEER can come back 106 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 SHEER; 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 SHEER
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SHEER.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SHEER:
Research on SHEER
Game-tree analysis and word research for SHEER, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SHEER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,994 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 SHEER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
- SHEER sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 10 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 43 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.5 of 5).
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).