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

OXBOW

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

As an opener, it rules out about 64.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with OXBOW Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɒksbəʊ/

Noun

A U-shaped piece of wood used as a collar for an ox, the upper parts of which are fastened to its yoke.

Noun

A meander in a river; the land enclosed by such a loop.

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 OXBOW performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OXBOW 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 43.2% of games, misses completely in 56.8%, and leaves about 845 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,791 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.05 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.

O__O_ O in the 1st position and O in the 4th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe OXBOW 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.

2.45 Entropy (bits)
845 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
64.4% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OXBOW 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.

4.05 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,791 Rank among openers
Opening with OXBOW left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 4.05 average. It ranks #14,791 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
25
3 guesses
482
4 guesses
1,232
5 guesses
564
6 guesses
46
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:
O

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
43%
Green tile
10%
All gray
57%

Feedback distribution

OXBOW can come back 42 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1348 answers
377 answers
144 answers
111 answers
65 answers
50 answers
41 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
23 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1X8B3O1W4
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Try next

RAISE CRATE RAILE SHARE MARSE DROLE

Strategy after playing OXBOW

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OXBOW:

57% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
16% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
6% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

56.8% →
RAISE 6.08 bits
15.9% →
CRATE 5.22 bits
6.1% →
RAILE 5.43 bits
4.7% →
SHARE 5.31 bits
2.7% →
MARSE 4.58 bits
2.1% →
DROLE 4.49 bits
1.7% →
TALER 4.80 bits
1.5% →
BRANE 4.24 bits
1.4% →
SLANT 3.80 bits
1.3% →
LATER 4.39 bits

Research on OXBOW

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

Optimal play

Opening with OXBOW, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.04 guesses and ranks #14,774 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.15 guesses at best and is rank #7,308 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.05; proven optimal play reaches 4.04. 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 AHKSBOH.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, OXBOW is a kind of land or curve.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OXBOW 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).