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

AMEBA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /əˈmiːbə/

Noun

Alternative spelling of amoeba.

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 AMEBA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts AMEBA 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 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 289 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,720 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 AMEBA 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.

3.89 Entropy (bits)
289 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 18% of evaluated openers
2.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How AMEBA 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,720 Rank among openers
Opening with AMEBA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,720 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
648
4 guesses
1,298
5 guesses
326
6 guesses
22
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
3 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
18%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

AMEBA can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

548 answers
450 answers
316 answers
201 answers
116 answers
92 answers
68 answers
57 answers
54 answers
47 answers
46 answers
40 answers
32 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
18 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1M3E1B3A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing AMEBA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing AMEBA:

23% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
19% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
13% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.1%
SOILY 5.65 bits
19.0%
RIONE 5.23 bits
13.3%
SLART 5.33 bits
8.5%
SLART 4.95 bits
4.9%
SETER 4.73 bits
3.9%
MOUTH 4.87 bits
2.9%
BUILT 4.70 bits
2.4%
BELIE 4.48 bits
2.3%
MOIRE 4.42 bits
2.0%
CAROM 4.37 bits

Research on AMEBA

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

Optimal play

Opening with AMEBA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,907 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 AMEBA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it AMIHBUH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
AMEBA 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).