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

KIRBY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

Alternative spelling of Kirby; only used in kirby grip and kirby pin. Genericized trademark.

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 KIRBY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KIRBY 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 74.1% of games, misses completely in 25.9%, and leaves about 274 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,542 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 KIRBY 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.

4.03 Entropy (bits)
274 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 24% of evaluated openers
1.92 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KIRBY 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,542 Rank among openers
Opening with KIRBY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,542 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
798
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
263
6 guesses
17
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
1 vowels
Common:
IR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
29%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

KIRBY can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

614 answers
366 answers
242 answers
173 answers
94 answers
93 answers
90 answers
90 answers
78 answers
47 answers
41 answers
36 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
26 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5I1R1B3Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing KIRBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KIRBY:

26% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
15% chance
Suggested:
STOAE
10% chance
Suggested:
STANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.9%
SLATE 6.41 bits
15.4%
STOAE 5.42 bits
10.2%
STANE 5.47 bits
7.3%
SALEP 4.90 bits
4.0%
CONTE 4.57 bits
3.9%
TRIED 4.92 bits
3.8%
ALONE 5.27 bits
3.8%
SAUTE 5.03 bits
3.3%
SLANE 5.15 bits
2.0%
OLATE 4.43 bits

Research on KIRBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with KIRBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,618 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,745 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 KURBEE.

Rhymes with DERBY

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KIRBY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Charles Kirby is still like a virgin.
© tatoeba.org contributor nonong (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Talking to Charlie Kirby is like talking to a wall.
© tatoeba.org contributor nonong (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).