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

SUBAK

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An ancient Korean barehand martial art.

Noun

A communal organization for the irrigation of paddy fields on Bali.

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 SUBAK performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SUBAK 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 74.0% of games, misses completely in 26.0%, and leaves about 268 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,966 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 SUBAK 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.

4.23 Entropy (bits)
268 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 34% of evaluated openers
1.72 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SUBAK 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,966 Rank among openers
Opening with SUBAK 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,966 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
830
4 guesses
1,212
5 guesses
245
6 guesses
15
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ASU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
33%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

SUBAK can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

617 answers
404 answers
158 answers
119 answers
98 answers
93 answers
86 answers
80 answers
72 answers
71 answers
43 answers
32 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1U1B3A1K5
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing SUBAK

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SUBAK:

26% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
17% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.0%
TOILE 5.95 bits
17.0%
CARLE 5.38 bits
6.7%
TRINE 5.14 bits
5.0%
TONER 5.27 bits
4.1%
CLOTE 4.76 bits
3.9%
PLIER 4.37 bits
3.6%
TROPE 5.23 bits
3.4%
THALE 4.41 bits
3.0%
PRATE 4.79 bits
3.0%
TOILE 4.90 bits

Research on SUBAK

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

Optimal play

Opening with SUBAK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,454 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 #3,565 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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.

How it sounds

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SUBAK 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).