Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

PUBIC

PUBIC is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpjuːbɪk/

Adjective

Of, or relating to the area of the body adjacent to the pubis or the pubes.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PYOOBIHK.

Rhymes with CUBIC

Use PUBIC in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 86.7% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 PUBIC performs as a guess

PUBIC is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 68.9% of games, misses completely in 31.1%, and leaves about 318 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,924 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 PUBIC 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.

4.00 Entropy (bits)
318 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
86.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUBIC 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,924 Rank among openers
Opening with PUBIC left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #8,924 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
834
4 guesses
1,201
5 guesses
254
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
IU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
22%
All gray
31%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
C H U M P
P U B I C

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches PUBIC in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

PUBIC can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

742 answers
305 answers
212 answers
139 answers
105 answers
102 answers
89 answers
73 answers
66 answers
53 answers
43 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1B3I1C3
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing PUBIC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUBIC:

31% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
13% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
9% chance
Suggested:
CHARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.1% →
TARSE 6.30 bits
12.8% →
TRINE 5.42 bits
8.9% →
CHARE 5.68 bits
5.8% →
STONE 5.17 bits
4.4% →
SERAL 5.17 bits
4.3% →
TARSE 5.44 bits
3.7% →
SATER 4.61 bits
3.1% →
TALER 4.88 bits
2.8% →
RANSE 5.13 bits
2.2% →
CLINE 4.31 bits

Research on PUBIC

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUBIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,623 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 #3,687 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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
PUBIC sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).