5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

ELBOW

Yes, ELBOW was the Wordle answer on March 26, 2025 (Wordle #1376).

As an opener, it rules out about 90.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ELBOW Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɛlbəʊ̯/[ˈæ̝wbɐw]/ˈɛlboʊ̯/

Noun

The joint between the upper arm and the forearm.

Noun

Any turn or bend like that of the elbow, in a wall, building, coastline, etc.; an angular or jointed part of any structure, such as the raised arm of a chair or sofa, or a short pipe fitting, turning at an angle or bent.

“the sides of windows, where the jamb makes an elbow with the window back”

Verb

To push with the elbow or elbows; to forge ahead using the elbows to assist.

“He elbowed his way through the crowd.”

Verb

To strike with the elbow.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: March 26, 2025 (#1376).

See the full page for that puzzle: March 26, 2025 (#1376).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How ELBOW performs as a guess

ELBOW is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 233 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,080 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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.

E___W E in the 1st position and W in the 5th position E__O_ E in the 1st position and O in the 4th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe ELBOW 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.

4.27 Entropy (bits)
233 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 37% of evaluated openers
1.68 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ELBOW 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,080 Rank among openers
Opening with ELBOW left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #9,080 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
809
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
251
6 guesses
17
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:
ELO

Feedback chances

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

Example solver route

R O A T E
D E M O N
E L B O W

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ELBOW in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ELBOW can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

467 answers
457 answers
210 answers
141 answers
132 answers
122 answers
69 answers
67 answers
59 answers
50 answers
48 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
38 answers
26 answers
26 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1L1B3O1W4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

STAIR SAINT COURT SAURY REATE TORSE

Strategy after playing ELBOW

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ELBOW:

20% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
19% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
9% chance
Suggested:
COURT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.7% →
STAIR 5.56 bits
19.3% →
SAINT 6.15 bits
8.8% →
COURT 5.21 bits
5.9% →
SAURY 4.80 bits
5.6% →
REATE 4.70 bits
5.1% →
TORSE 4.61 bits
2.9% →
SAINT 4.34 bits
2.8% →
SAINT 4.52 bits
2.5% →
LOCAL 4.34 bits
2.1% →
REATE 4.72 bits

Research on ELBOW

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

Optimal play

Opening with ELBOW, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,923 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,348 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it EHLBOH.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ELBOW is a kind of joint or curve.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ELBOW sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 89 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.

In a sentence

More power to your elbow!
© tatoeba.org contributor AutoBot (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He hit me with his elbow.
© tatoeba.org contributor carlosalberto (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).