Possible answer Not used yet F tier for first-turn info

BOBBY

BOBBY is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 70.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɒbi//ˈbɑbi/

Noun

A police officer.

Noun

A railway signaller.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 BOBBY performs as a guess

BOBBY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 49.6% of games, misses completely in 50.4%, and leaves about 700 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,822 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.08 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 BOBBY 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.

2.60 Entropy (bits)
700 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
70.5% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.35 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BOBBY 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.

4.08 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.76 Spread of game lengths
#14,822 Rank among openers
Opening with BOBBY left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.76 means those games clustered within about 0.76 of a guess of the 4.08 average. It ranks #14,822 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
23
3 guesses
460
4 guesses
1,218
5 guesses
598
6 guesses
49
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
1 vowels
Common:
O

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
50%
Green tile
33%
All gray
50%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S C O L D
B O U G H
B O B B Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches BOBBY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

BOBBY can come back 41 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1197 answers
328 answers
259 answers
192 answers
102 answers
58 answers
37 answers
34 answers
26 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
14 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1B3B3Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing BOBBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BOBBY:

50% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
14% chance
Suggested:
SATER
11% chance
Suggested:
RAISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

50.4%
RAISE 6.12 bits
13.8%
SATER 5.23 bits
10.9%
RAISE 4.70 bits
8.1%
CRUET 4.87 bits
4.3%
LEANT 5.22 bits
2.4%
DROLE 3.82 bits
1.6%
PARLE 4.59 bits
1.4%
LATER 4.62 bits
1.1%
RAINE 3.75 bits
0.9%
SNARE 3.92 bits

Research on BOBBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with BOBBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.05 guesses and ranks #14,804 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.26 guesses at best and is rank #7,437 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.08; proven optimal play reaches 4.05. 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 BAHBEE.

Rhymes with LOBBY HOBBY DOBIE

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BOBBY is a kind of officer.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BOBBY sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 17 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.

In a sentence

Bobby goes to the opera with his girlfriend.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Bobby is going to the opera with his girlfriend.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).