5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess A tier for first-turn info

SHIRE

Yes, SHIRE was the Wordle answer on January 17, 2022 (Wordle #212).

As an opener, it rules out about 95.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SHIRE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ʃaɪə//ʃaɪ(ə)ɹ/

Noun

The people living in a shire (noun sense 1.1) considered collectively.

Noun

The general area in which a person comes from or lives.

“When are you coming back to the shire?”

Verb

To constitute or reconstitute (a country or region) into one or more shires (noun sense 1.1) or counties.

“County Longford was shired in 1586.”

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: January 17, 2022 (#212).

See the full page for that puzzle: January 17, 2022 (#212).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How SHIRE performs as a guess

SHIRE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 88.1% of games, misses completely in 11.9%, and leaves about 99 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,692 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

S___E S in the 1st position and E in the 5th position S__R_ S in the 1st position and R in the 4th position _H__E H in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in SHIRE.

First-turn measures

All four describe SHIRE 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.

5.45 Entropy (bits)
99 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
95.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 98% of evaluated openers
0.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHIRE 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#1,692 Rank among openers
Opening with SHIRE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,692 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
87
3 guesses
960
4 guesses
1,097
5 guesses
186
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
2 vowels
Common:
EIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
43%
All gray
12%

Example solver route

R O A T E
P R I S M
S H I R E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SHIRE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SHIRE can come back 125 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

282 answers
177 answers
159 answers
158 answers
133 answers
115 answers
95 answers
64 answers
63 answers
56 answers
51 answers
43 answers
38 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4I1R1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

TALON METAL CAROL OATER TIDAL EAGLE

Strategy after playing SHIRE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHIRE:

12% chance
Suggested:
TALON
7% chance
Suggested:
METAL
7% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.9% →
TALON 5.59 bits
7.5% →
METAL 5.28 bits
6.7% →
CAROL 5.00 bits
6.7% →
OATER 4.04 bits
5.6% →
TIDAL 4.92 bits
4.8% →
EAGLE 4.56 bits
4.0% →
COALY 4.65 bits
2.7% →
MOUTH 4.74 bits
2.7% →
COATE 3.80 bits
2.4% →
SLANT 4.22 bits

Research on SHIRE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHIRE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,296 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 SHIRE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 SHYR.

Rhymes with SKIER SPIRE AFIRE SWIRE QUIRE

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SHIRE is a kind of district or horse.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHIRE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).