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

CUBES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kjuːbz//kjʉwbz//kjubz/

Noun

plural of cube

Noun

Testicles.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of cube

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 CUBES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CUBES 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 81.2% of games, misses completely in 18.8%, and leaves about 184 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,209 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 CUBES 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.

4.61 Entropy (bits)
184 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 59% of evaluated openers
1.34 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CUBES 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,209 Rank among openers
Opening with CUBES left 1 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,209 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
829
4 guesses
1,202
5 guesses
242
6 guesses
14
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:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
31%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

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

446 answers
309 answers
208 answers
188 answers
142 answers
83 answers
77 answers
74 answers
68 answers
57 answers
57 answers
51 answers
48 answers
44 answers
39 answers
33 answers
31 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3U1B3E1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing CUBES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CUBES:

19% chance
Suggested:
TALON
13% chance
Suggested:
REATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.8%
TALON 5.91 bits
13.0%
REATE 5.48 bits
8.8%
SAINT 5.20 bits
7.9%
RAINY 4.25 bits
6.0%
SLART 4.89 bits
3.5%
LAIRY 4.82 bits
3.2%
GRUNT 4.82 bits
3.1%
LATCH 4.72 bits
2.9%
MEALY 3.66 bits
2.4%
BARON 4.64 bits

Research on CUBES

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

Optimal play

Opening with CUBES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,400 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 #3,005 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 KYOOBZ.

Rhymes with TUBES BOOBS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CUBES is a kind of initiate or boy.

Synonyms BLOCK rookie lad dice SONNY

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CUBES sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Get me some ice cubes.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Do you have any ice cubes?
© 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).