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

BABUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BABUS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural 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 BABUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BABUS 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 71.9% of games, misses completely in 28.1%, and leaves about 319 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,067 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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___S B in the 1st position and S in the 5th position B__U_ B in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe BABUS 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.

3.69 Entropy (bits)
319 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BABUS 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#13,067 Rank among openers
Opening with BABUS left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,067 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
644
4 guesses
1,316
5 guesses
326
6 guesses
21
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
2 vowels
Common:
ASU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
25%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

BABUS can come back 63 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

667 answers
355 answers
265 answers
197 answers
197 answers
144 answers
77 answers
68 answers
48 answers
34 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1B3U1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

TOILE ALERT TRIPE CLONE RONTE THALE

Strategy after playing BABUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BABUS:

28% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
15% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
11% chance
Suggested:
TRIPE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.1% →
TOILE 5.91 bits
15.0% →
ALERT 5.55 bits
11.2% →
TRIPE 5.42 bits
8.3% →
CLONE 4.95 bits
8.3% →
RONTE 4.78 bits
6.1% →
THALE 4.70 bits
3.2% →
SHUNT 4.27 bits
2.9% →
TOILE 4.77 bits
2.0% →
POLEY 4.05 bits
1.4% →
CRONE 4.28 bits

Research on BABUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BABUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,408 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 #6,630 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, 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 first syllable Say it BAHBUHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BABUS 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).