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

PHUBS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 83.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of phub

Noun

plural of phub

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 PHUBS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PHUBS 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 63.7% of games, misses completely in 36.3%, and leaves about 381 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,897 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe PHUBS 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.

3.85 Entropy (bits)
381 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.9% 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 PHUBS 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
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,897 Rank among openers
Opening with PHUBS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,897 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
818
4 guesses
1,240
5 guesses
228
6 guesses
16
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:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
21%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

PHUBS can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

861 answers
272 answers
147 answers
141 answers
113 answers
83 answers
78 answers
68 answers
63 answers
62 answers
54 answers
42 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3H4U1B3S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing PHUBS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PHUBS:

36% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
6% chance
Suggested:
BLARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.3%
ARIEL 6.14 bits
11.5%
TIARE 5.73 bits
6.2%
BLARE 5.51 bits
5.9%
RAILE 4.94 bits
4.8%
CARTE 5.50 bits
3.5%
RAINE 5.26 bits
3.3%
RAILE 4.63 bits
2.9%
TIARE 5.34 bits
2.7%
TRADE 4.67 bits
2.6%
TRICE 5.12 bits

Research on PHUBS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PHUBS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,725 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 #3,749 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 3.78, 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

One syllable Say it FUHBZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.