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

GARBE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete form of garb (“clothing”).

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

Etymology

* As a German surname, variant of Garb, which is converged from words such as gerben (“to tan”) and Ger (“spear”). Compare the surnames Gerber, Gerhardt.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it GAHRB.

Rhymes with BARBE

Use GARBE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% 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 GARBE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GARBE 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 131 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,972 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 GARBE 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.

5.09 Entropy (bits)
131 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GARBE 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,972 Rank among openers
Opening with GARBE solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,972 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
75
3 guesses
872
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
208
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
38%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

GARBE can come back 111 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

370 answers
191 answers
182 answers
156 answers
128 answers
128 answers
108 answers
84 answers
74 answers
57 answers
53 answers
47 answers
46 answers
44 answers
40 answers
32 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2A1R1B3E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GARBE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GARBE:

16% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
8% chance
Suggested:
INTEL
8% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5% →
SOILY 5.69 bits
8.0% →
INTEL 5.13 bits
7.6% →
SLANT 5.19 bits
6.5% →
SOLED 3.97 bits
5.4% →
SIENT 4.67 bits
5.4% →
DROIT 4.93 bits
4.5% →
SONLY 4.49 bits
3.5% →
CRAFT 4.27 bits
3.1% →
SLANT 4.65 bits
2.4% →
SHALT 4.27 bits

Research on GARBE

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

Optimal play

Opening with GARBE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,152 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with GARBE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67; proven optimal play reaches 3.66. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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.

Familiarity and learning

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