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

KABAB

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

As an opener, it rules out about 72.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of kebab.

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 KABAB performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KABAB 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 50.9% of games, misses completely in 49.1%, and leaves about 661 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,721 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.02 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe KABAB 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.

2.80 Entropy (bits)
661 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
72.2% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.15 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KABAB 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.

4.02 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,721 Rank among openers
Opening with KABAB left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 4.02 average. It ranks #14,721 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
30
3 guesses
492
4 guesses
1,264
5 guesses
528
6 guesses
36
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
A

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
51%
Green tile
22%
All gray
49%

Feedback distribution

KABAB can come back 46 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1165 answers
340 answers
234 answers
112 answers
112 answers
101 answers
47 answers
36 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1B3A1B3
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing KABAB

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KABAB:

49% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
10% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

49.1%
TOILE 5.95 bits
14.3%
SLATE 5.47 bits
9.9%
RONTE 4.76 bits
4.7%
SOREL 4.79 bits
4.7%
TOILE 5.16 bits
4.3%
SLICE 5.03 bits
2.0%
SNARE 3.98 bits
1.5%
DROLE 4.48 bits
1.1%
POIRE 3.96 bits
1.1%
ROUTE 4.36 bits

Research on KABAB

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

Optimal play

Opening with KABAB, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.02 guesses and ranks #14,726 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.17 guesses at best and is rank #7,347 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.02; proven optimal play reaches 4.02. 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KABUHB. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KABAB 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.

In a sentence

The chef made kabab by using cinnamon sticks as skewers.
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).