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

RUBBY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

rubbing alcohol.

Noun

A drunkard.

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 RUBBY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RUBBY 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 65.1% of games, misses completely in 34.9%, and leaves about 430 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,886 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.89 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 RUBBY 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.

3.41 Entropy (bits)
430 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RUBBY 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.

3.89 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,886 Rank among openers
Opening with RUBBY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.89 average. It ranks #13,886 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
628
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
404
6 guesses
23
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
1 vowels
Common:
RU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
27%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

RUBBY can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

828 answers
488 answers
203 answers
160 answers
83 answers
76 answers
62 answers
59 answers
58 answers
47 answers
42 answers
28 answers
26 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1U1B3B3Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing RUBBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RUBBY:

35% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
21% chance
Suggested:
STOAE
9% chance
Suggested:
SALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.9%
SLANE 6.25 bits
20.6%
STOAE 5.50 bits
8.6%
SALET 4.91 bits
6.7%
STONE 5.22 bits
3.5%
ALINE 5.20 bits
3.2%
GLACE 4.58 bits
2.6%
CRUET 4.63 bits
2.5%
LIANE 4.50 bits
2.4%
TARRE 4.31 bits
2.0%
DIANE 4.55 bits

Research on RUBBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with RUBBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,871 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.06 guesses at best and is rank #6,850 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.89, at or below the proven-optimal 3.90, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it RUHBEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RUBBY sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).