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

BOMBO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 67.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BOMBO Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Short for bombo criollo

Noun

Alternative form of bumbo.

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 BOMBO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BOMBO 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 45.4% of games, misses completely in 54.6%, and leaves about 769 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,676 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.00 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__B_ B in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _O__O O in the 2nd position and O in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe BOMBO 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.

2.71 Entropy (bits)
769 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
67.6% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BOMBO 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.

4.00 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,676 Rank among openers
Opening with BOMBO left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 4.00 average. It ranks #14,676 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
526
4 guesses
1,235
5 guesses
520
6 guesses
36
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
2 vowels
Common:
O

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
45%
Green tile
23%
All gray
55%

Feedback distribution

BOMBO can come back 53 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1297 answers
252 answers
181 answers
156 answers
121 answers
40 answers
39 answers
31 answers
30 answers
27 answers
22 answers
22 answers
17 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1M3B3O1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

TIARE CRATE CRUET RAISE RAILE LAIRY

Strategy after playing BOMBO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BOMBO:

55% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
8% chance
Suggested:
CRUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

54.6% →
TIARE 6.16 bits
10.6% →
CRATE 5.23 bits
7.6% →
CRUET 4.71 bits
6.6% →
RAISE 5.43 bits
5.1% →
RAILE 5.28 bits
1.7% →
LAIRY 3.98 bits
1.6% →
CATER 4.86 bits
1.3% →
CATER 4.37 bits
1.3% →
LATER 3.92 bits
1.1% →
SLOOP 3.49 bits

Research on BOMBO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BOMBO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.98 guesses and ranks #14,616 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.13 guesses at best and is rank #7,248 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.00; proven optimal play reaches 3.98. 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 BAHMBOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BOMBO 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).