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

BUSES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of bus

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of bus

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 BUSES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BUSES 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 74.6% of games, misses completely in 25.4%, and leaves about 283 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,194 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 BUSES 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)
283 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.1% 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 BUSES 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,194 Rank among openers
Opening with BUSES left 1 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 3.85 average. It ranks #13,194 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
667
4 guesses
1,245
5 guesses
362
6 guesses
29
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:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
30%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

BUSES can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

603 answers
399 answers
217 answers
213 answers
147 answers
104 answers
90 answers
59 answers
51 answers
48 answers
45 answers
38 answers
28 answers
25 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1S1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BUSES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BUSES:

25% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
17% chance
Suggested:
REATE
9% chance
Suggested:
OATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.4%
CAROL 5.90 bits
16.8%
REATE 5.46 bits
9.1%
OATER 4.18 bits
9.0%
SLANT 5.09 bits
6.2%
SLART 4.82 bits
4.4%
COUNT 4.90 bits
3.8%
CLARY 4.20 bits
2.5%
ROANY 4.70 bits
2.1%
STUNK 4.13 bits
2.0%
TRUCE 4.15 bits

Research on BUSES

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

Optimal play

Opening with BUSES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,373 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with BUSES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85; proven optimal play reaches 3.84. 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 BUHSIHZ.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BUSES is a kind of transport or topology.

Synonyms COACH heap omnibus

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BUSES sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 10 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.3 of 5).

In a sentence

All the buses are full.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The buses are all full.
© 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).