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

BLUBS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BLUBS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /blʌbz/

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of blub

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 BLUBS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BLUBS 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 64.2% of games, misses completely in 35.8%, and leaves about 411 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,996 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.

B___S B in the 1st position and S in the 5th position B__B_ B in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _L__S L in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe BLUBS 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.

3.55 Entropy (bits)
411 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 8% of evaluated openers
2.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BLUBS 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,996 Rank among openers
Opening with BLUBS left 4 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 3.84 average. It ranks #12,996 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
690
4 guesses
1,243
5 guesses
357
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
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
22%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

BLUBS can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

850 answers
355 answers
268 answers
137 answers
101 answers
74 answers
73 answers
68 answers
53 answers
42 answers
39 answers
32 answers
29 answers
23 answers
19 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3L1U1B3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

TIARE RAILE RONTE CRANE IRATE SALLE

Strategy after playing BLUBS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BLUBS:

36% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
15% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.8% →
TIARE 6.17 bits
15.0% →
TIARE 5.76 bits
11.3% →
RAILE 5.32 bits
5.8% →
RONTE 4.94 bits
4.3% →
CRANE 5.04 bits
3.1% →
IRATE 5.25 bits
3.1% →
SALLE 4.73 bits
2.9% →
TRONE 4.80 bits
2.2% →
STAGE 4.27 bits
1.8% →
ANILE 3.95 bits

Research on BLUBS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BLUBS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,120 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,061 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 3.87, 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

One syllable Say it BLUHBZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BLUBS is a kind of cry.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BLUBS 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).