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

VARIA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈvɛəɹi.ə//ˈvɛɹi.ə/

Noun

Alternative form of baria (“Greek diacritic”).

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 VARIA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VARIA 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 238 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,666 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 VARIA 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.

4.16 Entropy (bits)
238 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 30% of evaluated openers
1.78 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VARIA 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#11,666 Rank among openers
Opening with VARIA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,666 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
755
4 guesses
1,178
5 guesses
344
6 guesses
23
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
3 vowels
Common:
AIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
27%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

VARIA can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

521 answers
282 answers
266 answers
259 answers
154 answers
144 answers
110 answers
85 answers
63 answers
43 answers
29 answers
26 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4A1R1I1A1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing VARIA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VARIA:

22% chance
Suggested:
STOLE
12% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
11% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
STOLE 5.91 bits
11.9%
SIENT 5.31 bits
11.2%
SLATE 5.68 bits
10.9%
TOUSE 5.25 bits
6.5%
TRACE 4.78 bits
6.1%
CLOTE 4.69 bits
4.6%
SPINE 4.26 bits
3.6%
SHUTE 4.76 bits
2.7%
CONTE 4.86 bits
1.8%
PALET 3.30 bits

Research on VARIA

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

Optimal play

Opening with VARIA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,549 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #5,965 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VAHREEUH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VARIA 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).