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

COBIA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A perciform marine fish of species Rachycentron canadum.

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

Etymology

First use in 1873. Of unknown origin, possibly via Spanish cobia from a language of the Caribbean.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KOHBEEUH.

Use COBIA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% 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 COBIA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COBIA 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 86.5% of games, misses completely in 13.5%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,115 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 COBIA 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.

4.63 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COBIA 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,115 Rank among openers
Opening with COBIA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,115 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
872
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
217
6 guesses
21

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
28%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

COBIA can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

419 answers
323 answers
277 answers
167 answers
152 answers
63 answers
57 answers
57 answers
54 answers
52 answers
49 answers
47 answers
46 answers
39 answers
37 answers
37 answers
36 answers
30 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1B3I1A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing COBIA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COBIA:

18% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
14% chance
Suggested:
SLEER
12% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6% →
TARSE 5.63 bits
13.5% →
SLEER 5.85 bits
11.6% →
TRINE 5.37 bits
7.0% →
SENOR 5.05 bits
6.4% →
SLYER 4.51 bits
2.6% →
REACT 4.69 bits
2.4% →
TALON 4.41 bits
2.4% →
SLART 4.35 bits
2.3% →
TRINE 4.55 bits
2.2% →
LURCH 4.74 bits

Research on COBIA

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

Optimal play

Opening with COBIA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,425 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,851 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COBIA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).