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

IMBED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Alternative spelling of embed.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it IHMBEHD.

Rhymes with AHEAD BREAD DREAD TREAD SHRED

Related meanings

Synonyms PLANT implant

Use IMBED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% 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 IMBED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts IMBED 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,096 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 IMBED 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.

4.26 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How IMBED 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#6,096 Rank among openers
Opening with IMBED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,096 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
855
4 guesses
1,230
5 guesses
209
6 guesses
7

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EI

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
22%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

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

536 answers
381 answers
268 answers
174 answers
103 answers
98 answers
66 answers
65 answers
64 answers
45 answers
43 answers
37 answers
37 answers
35 answers
32 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
19 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1M3B3E1D2
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing IMBED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing IMBED:

22% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
11% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5% →
ROAST 6.06 bits
16.0% →
SLART 5.92 bits
11.2% →
SLANT 5.48 bits
7.3% →
SOLAR 4.65 bits
4.3% →
SAURY 4.95 bits
4.1% →
SENTE 4.63 bits
2.8% →
ROAST 4.92 bits
2.7% →
DEARE 4.81 bits
2.7% →
ROANY 4.72 bits
1.9% →
BLARE 4.45 bits

Research on IMBED

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

Optimal play

Opening with IMBED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,273 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 IMBED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
IMBED 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).