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

BUBBY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 63.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BUBBY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbʊbi//ˈbʌbi/

Noun

Familiar term of address for a boy; bub; bubba.

Noun

Alternative spelling of bubbe (“grandmother”).

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 BUBBY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BUBBY 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 42.1% of games, misses completely in 57.9%, and leaves about 865 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,837 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.10 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___Y B in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position B__B_ B in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _U__Y U in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe BUBBY 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.

2.35 Entropy (bits)
865 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
63.6% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.60 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BUBBY 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.

4.10 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,837 Rank among openers
Opening with BUBBY left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 4.10 average. It ranks #14,837 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
24
3 guesses
422
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
622
6 guesses
47
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:
U

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
42%
Green tile
29%
All gray
58%

Feedback distribution

BUBBY can come back 40 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1375 answers
276 answers
233 answers
118 answers
109 answers
53 answers
45 answers
33 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1B3B3Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Try next

TIARE SARED STONE LIANE STIRE MARSE

Strategy after playing BUBBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BUBBY:

58% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
SARED
10% chance
Suggested:
STONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

57.9% →
TIARE 6.18 bits
11.6% →
SARED 4.86 bits
9.8% →
STONE 5.29 bits
5.0% →
LIANE 5.27 bits
4.6% →
STIRE 4.76 bits
2.2% →
MARSE 3.02 bits
1.9% →
ALONE 4.62 bits
1.4% →
OATER 4.68 bits
0.7% →
DROLE 3.57 bits
0.6% →
SENOR 3.81 bits

Research on BUBBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with BUBBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.09 guesses and ranks #14,839 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.27 guesses at best and is rank #7,441 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.10; proven optimal play reaches 4.09. 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 BUHBEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BUBBY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).