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

KABOB

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

US spelling of kebab.

Verb

US spelling 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 KABOB performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KABOB 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 69.8% of games, misses completely in 30.2%, and leaves about 376 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,101 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.91 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 KABOB 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.

3.45 Entropy (bits)
376 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KABOB 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.

3.91 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#14,101 Rank among openers
Opening with KABOB left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.91 average. It ranks #14,101 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
587
4 guesses
1,319
5 guesses
391
6 guesses
23
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
21%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

KABOB can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

718 answers
395 answers
377 answers
225 answers
77 answers
75 answers
71 answers
70 answers
52 answers
35 answers
32 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1B3O1B3
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing KABOB

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KABOB:

30% chance
Suggested:
SILER
17% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
16% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.2%
SILER 5.94 bits
16.6%
SLATE 5.61 bits
15.9%
TRONE 5.25 bits
9.5%
TRINE 4.70 bits
3.2%
SLICE 5.03 bits
3.2%
MORAL 4.41 bits
3.0%
SLIER 4.85 bits
2.9%
TRINE 4.26 bits
2.2%
SNARE 4.17 bits
1.5%
SLADE 4.51 bits

Research on KABOB

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

Optimal play

Opening with KABOB, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,084 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.05 guesses at best and is rank #6,785 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.91, at or below the proven-optimal 3.92, 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 KABOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, KABOB is a kind of dish.

Synonyms KEBAB

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KABOB 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).