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

BOABS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of boab

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 BOABS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BOABS 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 76.6% of games, misses completely in 23.4%, and leaves about 252 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,472 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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 BOABS 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.

3.97 Entropy (bits)
252 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 21% of evaluated openers
1.97 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BOABS 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,472 Rank among openers
Opening with BOABS left 5 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 3.82 average. It ranks #12,472 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
690
4 guesses
1,254
5 guesses
341
6 guesses
16
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:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
32%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

BOABS can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

555 answers
331 answers
236 answers
174 answers
169 answers
158 answers
103 answers
90 answers
80 answers
77 answers
64 answers
41 answers
28 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1A1B3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing BOABS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BOABS:

23% chance
Suggested:
LINER
14% chance
Suggested:
TALER
10% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.4%
LINER 5.92 bits
13.9%
TALER 5.42 bits
9.9%
STILE 5.35 bits
7.3%
TRINE 5.27 bits
7.1%
TRUCE 4.60 bits
6.7%
TRICE 5.14 bits
4.3%
THALE 4.09 bits
3.8%
SALET 4.78 bits
3.4%
TRIPE 3.99 bits
3.2%
ACORN 4.46 bits

Research on BOABS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BOABS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,444 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.02 guesses at best and is rank #6,478 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 BOHBZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.