[iams]

The skill is in not leaving yourself with two words that would both fit. If earlier you had tried a word with both an 'm' and a 'g' such as 'image' you would not have been left in a position where you would have to have a lucky guess

[slg]

It is much easier to work backwards with that logic than forward. It is impossible to both try to guess the word while also trying to eliminate all possible overlaps that may occur with whatever results you get from the previous word. In this specific instance, I would have never played "image" because my first word was "tears" so I immediately knew there was a t, e, and r. There was no reason to try to determine if there was a g or m until I was presented with "ti_er".