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

SAHIB

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A term of respect for a white European or other man of rank in colonial India.

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

Etymology

From Hindustani صاحب / साहिब (sāhib, “lord”), from Classical Persian صاحب (sāhib), from Arabic صَاحِب (ṣāḥib, “companion”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SAHIB in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.7% 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

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 SAHIB performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SAHIB 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 81.7% of games, misses completely in 18.3%, and leaves about 174 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,848 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 SAHIB 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.

4.58 Entropy (bits)
174 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SAHIB 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#5,848 Rank among openers
Opening with SAHIB solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,848 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
885
4 guesses
1,207
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
34%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

SAHIB can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

437 answers
270 answers
225 answers
159 answers
129 answers
110 answers
81 answers
80 answers
75 answers
67 answers
56 answers
55 answers
50 answers
43 answers
40 answers
35 answers
33 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
17 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1H4I1B3
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing SAHIB

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SAHIB:

18% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
11% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
9% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.3% →
DROLE 5.88 bits
11.3% →
ALERT 5.54 bits
9.4% →
TRINE 5.36 bits
6.7% →
TONER 4.73 bits
5.4% →
TONER 5.12 bits
4.6% →
CONTE 5.44 bits
3.4% →
BLUER 5.13 bits
3.4% →
RUOTE 5.21 bits
3.1% →
PLATE 4.44 bits
2.8% →
CLOTE 4.56 bits

Research on SAHIB

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

Optimal play

Opening with SAHIB, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,660 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,489 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
SAHIB 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).