A type of twilled woolen cloth, often with a tartan or chequered pattern.
A length of such material used as a piece of clothing, formerly worn in the Scottish Highlands and other parts of northern Britain and remaining as an item of ceremonial dress worn by members of Scottish pipe bands.
The typical chequered pattern of a plaid; tartan.
Having a pattern or colors which resemble a Scottish tartan; checkered or marked with bars or stripes at right angles to one another.
PLAID is a 5-letter word with 2 vowels (A, I) and 3 consonants (P, L, D). Every letter is distinct, so it rarely punishes a clean opening guess.
It leans on high-frequency letters (A, I), so a strong vowel-and-common-consonant opener tends to light up quickly. There are no rare letters here, so it is a fair, mid-difficulty answer for the daily Classic puzzle.
Across the 1,734 curated answers in the Wordocious bank, A appears in 40% of answers (the 2nd most common letter), I appears in 29% of answers (the 6th most common letter), L appears in 26% of answers (the 8th most common letter). 12 other answers share the opening “PL-”, so two purple tiles up front still leave real guessing to do.
Difficulty: 1/5 — very approachable, because its letters are common and no close neighbors compete with it.
One letter away in the answer bank: PLAIN. Each of these turns four tiles purple against PLAID — the classic endgame squeeze where spending a guess on the differing letter beats burning attempts on hope.
Words like PLAID are exactly what the daily puzzles throw at you. Warm up in Practice, race the clock in the Daily Challenge, or study the best starting words before your next run. New to the multi-board modes? The mode guides cover every mode.
Definitions adapted from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API (CC BY-SA). Letter statistics, difficulty ratings, and near-miss analysis are original Wordocious research computed from our curated answer list.
