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

TEARY

Yes, TEARY was the Wordle answer on March 6, 2024 (Wordle #991).

As an opener, it rules out about 96.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtɪəɹi//ˈtɪɹi//ˈtɪɚi/

Adjective

Of a person, having eyes filled with tears; inclined to cry.

“No wonder Ryan was teary; he missed his parents.”

Adjective

Of eyes, filled with tears.

“Wade looked into his girlfriend's teary eyes.”

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: March 6, 2024 (#991).

See the full page for that puzzle: March 6, 2024 (#991).

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

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How TEARY performs as a guess

TEARY 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 91.3% of games, misses completely in 8.7%, and leaves about 86 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,763 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe TEARY 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.

5.53 Entropy (bits)
86 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
96.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 99% of evaluated openers
0.41 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TEARY 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
#1,763 Rank among openers
Opening with TEARY 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 #1,763 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
81
3 guesses
964
4 guesses
1,102
5 guesses
185
6 guesses
19
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:
AERT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
42%
All gray
9%

Example solver route

R O A T E
H E A R T
T E A R Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches TEARY in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

TEARY can come back 129 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

206 answers
199 answers
158 answers
124 answers
115 answers
111 answers
97 answers
89 answers
72 answers
69 answers
64 answers
56 answers
56 answers
50 answers
49 answers
41 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1E1A1R1Y4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing TEARY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TEARY:

9% chance
Suggested:
SONIC
8% chance
Suggested:
SIDLE
7% chance
Suggested:
POISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

8.7%
SONIC 5.66 bits
8.4%
SIDLE 5.36 bits
6.7%
POISE 4.56 bits
5.2%
SIDLE 4.16 bits
4.8%
CANAL 5.22 bits
4.7%
HOIST 5.15 bits
4.1%
PRONG 4.40 bits
3.7%
ANGLE 4.60 bits
3.0%
CLASP 4.59 bits
2.9%
SLICE 4.70 bits

Research on TEARY

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

Optimal play

Opening with TEARY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #888 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,169 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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 TIHREE.

Rhymes with WEARY EERIE LEARY LEERY BEERY

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TEARY 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.

In a sentence

His eyes seemed to be teary.
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I get teary-eyed every time I see this movie.
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).