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

JAMBS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of jamb

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

In a sentence

The door jambs prevent you from opening it outward, into the hallway.
© tatoeba.org contributor Auride (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use JAMBS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 84.7% 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 JAMBS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts JAMBS 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 68.3% of games, misses completely in 31.7%, and leaves about 366 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,572 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 JAMBS 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.

3.52 Entropy (bits)
366 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How JAMBS 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#12,572 Rank among openers
Opening with JAMBS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,572 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
666
4 guesses
1,335
5 guesses
302
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
18%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

JAMBS can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

756 answers
334 answers
325 answers
175 answers
136 answers
114 answers
88 answers
52 answers
51 answers
45 answers
39 answers
33 answers
32 answers
26 answers
21 answers
18 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

J8A1M3B3S1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 20 points

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

Strategy after playing JAMBS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing JAMBS:

32% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
14% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
14% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.7% →
RIONE 5.99 bits
14.0% →
ALERT 5.59 bits
13.6% →
TOILE 5.35 bits
7.3% →
RONTE 4.82 bits
5.7% →
THALE 4.76 bits
4.8% →
TOILE 5.34 bits
3.7% →
ROUTE 5.15 bits
2.2% →
BEARD 4.79 bits
2.1% →
STOLE 3.96 bits
1.9% →
DROLE 4.62 bits

Research on JAMBS

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

Optimal play

Opening with JAMBS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,926 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,755 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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
JAMBS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).