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

GARBO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A rubbish collector; a garbage man.

Noun

Garbage; something considered worthless.

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 GARBO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GARBO 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 81.7% of games, misses completely in 18.3%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,039 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 GARBO 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.

4.65 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.30 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GARBO 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#6,039 Rank among openers
Opening with GARBO left 2 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,039 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
883
4 guesses
1,151
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
16
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:
AOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
25%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

GARBO can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

434 answers
253 answers
236 answers
203 answers
142 answers
126 answers
117 answers
58 answers
57 answers
54 answers
52 answers
41 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2A1R1B3O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GARBO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GARBO:

18% chance
Suggested:
STILE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
10% chance
Suggested:
CONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.3%
STILE 6.09 bits
10.7%
SLATE 5.63 bits
9.9%
CONTE 5.20 bits
8.6%
TRIER 5.05 bits
6.0%
SIENT 4.58 bits
5.3%
TRACE 4.82 bits
4.9%
SOOTE 4.42 bits
2.4%
SHIEL 4.42 bits
2.4%
TONAL 4.32 bits
2.3%
SUCRE 4.67 bits

Research on GARBO

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

Optimal play

Opening with GARBO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,134 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 GARBO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 GAHRBOH.

Rhymes with CARBO

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GARBO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Greta Garbo was a Swedish actress.
© tatoeba.org contributor Spamster (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Greta Garbo was one of the great stars of the silent era.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).