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

NUMBS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NUMBS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of numb

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 NUMBS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NUMBS 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 68.5% of games, misses completely in 31.5%, and leaves about 337 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,984 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

N___S N in the 1st position and S in the 5th position N__B_ N in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in NUMBS.

First-turn measures

All four describe NUMBS 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)
337 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 16% of evaluated openers
2.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NUMBS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#7,984 Rank among openers
Opening with NUMBS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,984 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
813
4 guesses
1,278
5 guesses
213
6 guesses
10
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:
NSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
14%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

NUMBS can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

748 answers
327 answers
268 answers
119 answers
113 answers
90 answers
80 answers
78 answers
50 answers
47 answers
42 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1U1M3B3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

TALER STALE ARIEL BLARE CARLE CLOTE

Strategy after playing NUMBS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NUMBS:

32% chance
Suggested:
TALER
14% chance
Suggested:
STALE
11% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.5% →
TALER 6.13 bits
13.8% →
STALE 5.69 bits
11.3% →
ARIEL 5.57 bits
5.0% →
BLARE 5.46 bits
4.8% →
CARLE 5.48 bits
3.8% →
CLOTE 5.47 bits
3.4% →
TIARE 4.71 bits
3.3% →
LATER 4.54 bits
2.1% →
TRIDE 4.28 bits
2.0% →
SHART 4.38 bits

Research on NUMBS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NUMBS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,434 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,602 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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

One syllable Say it NUHMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, NUMBS is a kind of change.

Synonyms dead asleep dull BLUNT afraid insensitive

Opposites sensitive sensible

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NUMBS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).