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

PUBES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpjuːbiːz//pjuːbz/

Noun

plural of pubis (“pubic bones”)

Noun

The pubic region.

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

Etymology

From Latin pubes (“the hair which appears on the body at the age of puberty, the genitals”), from pubes, puber (“grown up, of mature age; of plants, downy, pubescent”); see puberty.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PUBES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PUBES Open Word Finder

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 PUBES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PUBES 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 78.6% of games, misses completely in 21.4%, and leaves about 211 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,196 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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.

P___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__E_ P in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position PU_ES P in the 1st position, U in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe PUBES 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
211 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUBES 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,196 Rank among openers
Opening with PUBES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,196 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
828
4 guesses
1,228
5 guesses
220
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
29%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

PUBES can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
340 answers
191 answers
188 answers
126 answers
86 answers
76 answers
65 answers
55 answers
50 answers
45 answers
44 answers
43 answers
42 answers
40 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1B3E1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

CAROL LEARE SHALT TONER SLANT COUNT

Strategy after playing PUBES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUBES:

21% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
14% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
8% chance
Suggested:
SHALT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.4% →
CAROL 5.97 bits
14.3% →
LEARE 5.51 bits
8.0% →
SHALT 5.26 bits
7.9% →
TONER 4.41 bits
5.3% →
SLANT 4.88 bits
3.6% →
COUNT 4.87 bits
3.2% →
CLARY 4.33 bits
2.7% →
ROANY 4.72 bits
2.3% →
RAILE 4.46 bits
2.1% →
RAINY 4.78 bits

Research on PUBES

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUBES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #5,941 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with PUBES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
PUBES 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).