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

NABOB

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈneɪbɑb//ˈneɪbɒb/

Noun

Someone of great wealth or importance.

Noun

A person with a grandiose style or manner.

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

Etymology

In colloquial usage in English since 1612, from a corruption of Hindustani नवाब (navāb) / نواب (navāb, “nawab”), perhaps via Portuguese nababo, from Classical Persian نَوَّاب (nawwāb), from Arabic نُوَّاب (nuwwāb), the honorific plural of نَائِب (nāʔib, “deputy”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it NABAHB.

Use NABOB in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% 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 NABOB performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NABOB 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 74.9% of games, misses completely in 25.1%, and leaves about 287 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,718 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 NABOB 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.

3.84 Entropy (bits)
287 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NABOB 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,718 Rank among openers
Opening with NABOB left 3 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 3.83 average. It ranks #12,718 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
686
4 guesses
1,282
5 guesses
322
6 guesses
23

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
21%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

NABOB can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

599 answers
357 answers
307 answers
192 answers
180 answers
94 answers
89 answers
61 answers
60 answers
51 answers
49 answers
35 answers
25 answers
23 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1B3O1B3
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing NABOB

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NABOB:

25% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
15% chance
Suggested:
STARE
13% chance
Suggested:
TORSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.1% →
SLIER 6.07 bits
15.0% →
STARE 5.59 bits
12.9% →
TORSE 5.35 bits
8.1% →
SUITE 5.23 bits
7.6% →
SLYER 4.64 bits
3.9% →
SLANE 4.51 bits
3.7% →
TRIDE 4.61 bits
2.6% →
MORAL 4.37 bits
2.5% →
SLIER 4.87 bits
2.1% →
TRIDE 3.84 bits

Research on NABOB

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

Optimal play

Opening with NABOB, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,810 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,061 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
NABOB 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).