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

COMBE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kuːm/

Noun

A valley, often wooded and often with no river

Noun

A cirque.

Alternative forms: comb, coomb, coombe

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 COMBE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COMBE 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,704 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 COMBE 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.

4.60 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 59% of evaluated openers
1.35 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COMBE 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,704 Rank among openers
Opening with COMBE solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,704 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
891
4 guesses
1,205
5 guesses
194
6 guesses
9
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
37%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

COMBE can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

471 answers
358 answers
205 answers
171 answers
104 answers
79 answers
64 answers
63 answers
60 answers
53 answers
47 answers
40 answers
34 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1M3B3E1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing COMBE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COMBE:

20% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
15% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8%
SAINT 6.19 bits
15.1%
STAIR 5.28 bits
8.6%
SLART 5.27 bits
7.2%
SNORT 5.17 bits
4.4%
SADLY 4.50 bits
3.3%
SHALT 4.80 bits
2.7%
STAIR 4.91 bits
2.7%
LAIRY 4.64 bits
2.5%
SAULT 4.88 bits
2.2%
BLAER 4.65 bits

Research on COMBE

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

Optimal play

Opening with COMBE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,962 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,255 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KOHM.

Rhymes with GNOME GLOAM

Familiarity and learning

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