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

FORBY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with FORBY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fəˈbʌɪ/

Adjective

Uncommon; out of the ordinary; extraordinary; superior.

“He's a forbye man.”

Adverb

Past; by; beyond.

Adverb

Uncommonly; exceptionally.

“He was forby kind.”

Preposition

Beyond; past; more than; greater than; over and above; moreover.

Alternative forms: foreby, forbye

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 FORBY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FORBY 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 71.7% of games, misses completely in 28.3%, and leaves about 285 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,484 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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.

F___Y F in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position F__B_ F in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _O__Y O in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe FORBY 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.

4.12 Entropy (bits)
285 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 29% of evaluated openers
1.82 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FORBY 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,484 Rank among openers
Opening with FORBY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,484 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
831
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
255
6 guesses
11
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
1 vowels
Common:
OR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
34%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

FORBY can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

672 answers
331 answers
178 answers
170 answers
116 answers
108 answers
94 answers
69 answers
50 answers
44 answers
44 answers
40 answers
35 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4O1R1B3Y4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

SLANE TEASE SLANT SAINT CLINE TRACE

Strategy after playing FORBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FORBY:

28% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
14% chance
Suggested:
TEASE
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.3% →
SLANE 6.33 bits
13.9% →
TEASE 5.36 bits
7.5% →
SLANT 5.21 bits
7.2% →
SAINT 4.90 bits
4.9% →
CLINE 4.81 bits
4.5% →
TRACE 4.36 bits
4.0% →
BLATE 5.37 bits
2.9% →
SAUCE 5.02 bits
2.1% →
LIANE 4.75 bits
1.9% →
LEANT 4.35 bits

Research on FORBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with FORBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,246 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,398 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 FAWRBEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FORBY 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).