5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

ABYSS

Yes, ABYSS was the Wordle answer on October 23, 2021 (Wordle #126).

As an opener, it rules out about 85.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ABYSS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /əˈbɪs//æˈbɪs/

Noun

Hell; the bottomless pit; primeval chaos; a confined subterranean ocean.

Noun

A bottomless or unfathomed depth, gulf, or chasm; hence, any deep, immeasurable; any void space.

Alternative forms: abysm, abyssus, abime

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: October 23, 2021 (#126).

See the full page for that puzzle: October 23, 2021 (#126).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How verification and withdrawal work

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How ABYSS performs as a guess

ABYSS is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 70.4% of games, misses completely in 29.6%, and leaves about 339 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,986 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

A___S A in the 1st position and S in the 5th position A__S_ A in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _B__S B in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in ABYSS.

First-turn measures

All four describe ABYSS 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.

3.63 Entropy (bits)
339 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
85.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 10% of evaluated openers
2.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ABYSS 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#12,986 Rank among openers
Opening with ABYSS left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #12,986 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
664
4 guesses
1,312
5 guesses
317
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
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
15%
All gray
30%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
A B Y S S

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ABYSS in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ABYSS can come back 59 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

702 answers
410 answers
226 answers
185 answers
123 answers
116 answers
95 answers
79 answers
66 answers
65 answers
42 answers
32 answers
24 answers
22 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1B3Y4S1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TRINE CARLE RIONE LEANT TOILE DROLE

Strategy after playing ABYSS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ABYSS:

30% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
17% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.6% →
TRINE 6.17 bits
17.3% →
CARLE 5.54 bits
9.5% →
TRINE 5.26 bits
7.8% →
RIONE 4.62 bits
5.2% →
LEANT 4.73 bits
4.9% →
TOILE 5.30 bits
4.0% →
DROLE 4.94 bits
3.3% →
TARDY 4.17 bits
2.8% →
ROUTE 4.90 bits
2.7% →
BLORE 4.77 bits

Research on ABYSS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ABYSS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,473 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.04 guesses at best and is rank #6,671 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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 second syllable Say it UHBIHS.

Rhymes with SWISS BLISS CRISS AMISS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ABYSS is a kind of opening.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ABYSS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 12, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 54 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

In a sentence

How deep is the abyss?
© tatoeba.org contributor popball (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He fell into the abyss.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).