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

BUBAL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An extinct subspecies of the hartebeest (†Alcelaphus buselaphus buselaphus), which was formerly native to northern Africa.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Use BUBAL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.7% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How BUBAL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BUBAL 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 70.1% of games, misses completely in 29.9%, and leaves about 341 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,924 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe BUBAL 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.

3.80 Entropy (bits)
341 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BUBAL 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,924 Rank among openers
Opening with BUBAL left 1 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 #12,924 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
674
4 guesses
1,263
5 guesses
347
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
27%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

BUBAL can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

712 answers
445 answers
179 answers
152 answers
146 answers
106 answers
68 answers
58 answers
49 answers
42 answers
41 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
26 answers
22 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1B3A1L1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing BUBAL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BUBAL:

30% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
19% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.9% →
TRONE 6.15 bits
18.7% →
TARSE 5.53 bits
7.5% →
TOILE 5.07 bits
6.4% →
TRONE 5.49 bits
6.1% →
SPALE 4.73 bits
4.4% →
MORSE 4.37 bits
2.9% →
CATER 4.44 bits
2.4% →
SOWER 4.28 bits
2.1% →
TRINE 4.83 bits
1.8% →
SCONE 4.03 bits

Research on BUBAL

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

Optimal play

Opening with BUBAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,075 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 #6,047 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 3.86, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).