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

EMBAY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

To shut in, enclose, shelter or trap, such as ships in a bay.

Verb

To bathe; to steep.

Alternative forms: imbay

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

Use EMBAY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.5% 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 EMBAY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EMBAY 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 83.6% of games, misses completely in 16.4%, and leaves about 227 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,669 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 EMBAY 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.

4.29 Entropy (bits)
227 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EMBAY 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,669 Rank among openers
Opening with EMBAY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,669 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
747
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
292
6 guesses
21

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
28%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

EMBAY can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

476 answers
390 answers
262 answers
200 answers
141 answers
83 answers
64 answers
61 answers
51 answers
49 answers
48 answers
48 answers
47 answers
39 answers
38 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1M3B3A1Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing EMBAY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EMBAY:

20% chance
Suggested:
SIREE
16% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.0% →
SIREE 5.50 bits
16.4% →
SNORT 5.93 bits
11.0% →
SLART 5.31 bits
8.4% →
SLART 5.09 bits
5.9% →
SOILY 4.09 bits
3.5% →
SLANT 4.04 bits
2.7% →
TONAL 4.41 bits
2.6% →
MOUTH 4.93 bits
2.1% →
MOIRE 4.42 bits
2.1% →
CAROM 4.33 bits

Research on EMBAY

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

Optimal play

Opening with EMBAY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,741 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,301 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).