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

YEARS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /jɪəz//jɪːz//jɜːz/

Noun

plural of year.

Noun

A very long time.

“It took years for the bus to come.”

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 YEARS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts YEARS 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 90.9% of games, misses completely in 9.1%, and leaves about 94 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,329 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 YEARS 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.

5.29 Entropy (bits)
94 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 95% of evaluated openers
0.65 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How YEARS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,329 Rank among openers
Opening with YEARS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,329 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
907
4 guesses
1,163
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
26
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:
AERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
27%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

YEARS can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

216 answers
187 answers
161 answers
151 answers
120 answers
118 answers
109 answers
97 answers
95 answers
65 answers
64 answers
55 answers
53 answers
52 answers
45 answers
44 answers
42 answers
40 answers
34 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Y4E1A1R1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing YEARS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing YEARS:

9% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
8% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
7% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.1%
COUNT 5.98 bits
7.9%
TOILE 5.53 bits
6.8%
TOILE 4.34 bits
6.4%
TALON 5.26 bits
5.1%
DIMLY 4.30 bits
5.0%
PRINT 4.62 bits
4.6%
STINK 4.86 bits
4.1%
LANCE 4.53 bits
4.0%
SPILE 4.67 bits
2.7%
CAROL 4.64 bits

Research on YEARS

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

Optimal play

Opening with YEARS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,785 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 YEARS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 YIHRZ.

Rhymes with FEARS PEERS BEERS GEARS PIERS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, YEARS is a kind of period or amount.

Synonyms days age

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
YEARS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 912 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

See you in two years.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He was well on in years.
© tatoeba.org contributor Nuel (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).