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

ABLES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of able

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 ABLES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ABLES 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 87.0% of games, misses completely in 13.0%, and leaves about 122 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,005 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 ABLES 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.

5.01 Entropy (bits)
122 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 84% of evaluated openers
0.94 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ABLES 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,005 Rank among openers
Opening with ABLES left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #4,005 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
891
4 guesses
1,200
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
15
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:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
25%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

ABLES can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

309 answers
215 answers
199 answers
151 answers
133 answers
99 answers
97 answers
94 answers
89 answers
81 answers
54 answers
53 answers
53 answers
48 answers
41 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1B3L1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ABLES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ABLES:

13% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
9% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
8% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.0%
COUNT 5.82 bits
9.1%
TRINE 5.39 bits
8.4%
CAIRN 5.15 bits
6.4%
SNOUT 5.05 bits
5.6%
TONER 4.41 bits
4.2%
COULD 4.89 bits
4.1%
RONTE 4.67 bits
4.0%
TRACE 5.00 bits
3.7%
SHART 4.49 bits
3.4%
CAROL 4.03 bits

Research on ABLES

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

Optimal play

Opening with ABLES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,609 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 ABLES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 AYBUHLZ.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ABLES sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (3.1 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).