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

PLEBS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /plɛbz/

Noun

plural of pleb

Noun

The common people, especially (derogatory) the mob.

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

Etymology

From Latin plēbs (“the plebeian class”), variant of earlier plēbēs. Later also understood as the plural of pleb.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PLEBS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.8% 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 PLEBS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PLEBS 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 80.9% of games, misses completely in 19.1%, and leaves about 196 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,687 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 PLEBS 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.

4.54 Entropy (bits)
196 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PLEBS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,687 Rank among openers
Opening with PLEBS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,687 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
868
4 guesses
1,246
5 guesses
174
6 guesses
9

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
22%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

PLEBS can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

456 answers
366 answers
196 answers
158 answers
126 answers
115 answers
71 answers
66 answers
61 answers
58 answers
48 answers
47 answers
44 answers
42 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3L1E1B3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PLEBS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PLEBS:

19% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
15% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.1% →
TRAIN 6.04 bits
15.4% →
ROATE 5.32 bits
8.2% →
SAINT 5.34 bits
6.6% →
LOYAL 5.03 bits
5.3% →
STAIR 4.84 bits
4.8% →
REATE 4.69 bits
3.0% →
BATON 5.07 bits
2.8% →
TRADE 4.65 bits
2.6% →
TIARE 4.75 bits
2.4% →
ALOFT 4.18 bits

Research on PLEBS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PLEBS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,702 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,585 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
PLEBS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).