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

BABOO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BABOO Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Archaic spelling of babu.

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 BABOO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BABOO 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 66.1% of games, misses completely in 33.9%, and leaves about 440 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,595 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.97 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.

B___O B in the 1st position and O in the 5th position B__O_ B in the 1st position and O in the 4th position _A__O A in the 2nd position and O in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe BABOO 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.

3.24 Entropy (bits)
440 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 3% of evaluated openers
2.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BABOO 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.

3.97 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,595 Rank among openers
Opening with BABOO left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.97 average. It ranks #14,595 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
526
4 guesses
1,282
5 guesses
469
6 guesses
34
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

3/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
27%
All gray
34%

Feedback distribution

BABOO can come back 58 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

804 answers
451 answers
345 answers
238 answers
78 answers
73 answers
40 answers
32 answers
31 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1B3O1O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

SLIER SLATE CRUSE TRINE MORAL SIREN

Strategy after playing BABOO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BABOO:

34% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
19% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
15% chance
Suggested:
CRUSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.9% →
SLIER 6.00 bits
19.0% →
SLATE 5.53 bits
14.5% →
CRUSE 5.29 bits
10.0% →
TRINE 4.68 bits
3.3% →
MORAL 4.45 bits
3.1% →
SLIER 4.89 bits
1.7% →
SIREN 4.10 bits
1.3% →
TROOP 3.47 bits
1.3% →
SLADE 4.11 bits
1.1% →
TRINE 4.02 bits

Research on BABOO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BABOO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.97 guesses and ranks #14,529 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 BABOO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.97; proven optimal play reaches 3.97. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 BAHBOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BABOO is a kind of man.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BABOO 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).