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

TABUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TABUS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of tabu

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 TABUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TABUS 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 79.9% of games, misses completely in 20.1%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,084 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.

T___S T in the 1st position and S in the 5th position T__U_ T in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TABUS 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
179 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.29 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TABUS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,084 Rank among openers
Opening with TABUS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,084 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
884
4 guesses
1,194
5 guesses
200
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:
ASTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
24%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

TABUS can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

477 answers
257 answers
173 answers
143 answers
141 answers
128 answers
92 answers
83 answers
69 answers
63 answers
62 answers
53 answers
49 answers
41 answers
37 answers
37 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1B3U1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

NOIRE LEARN PLIER MORNE CLONE REFIT

Strategy after playing TABUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TABUS:

20% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
11% chance
Suggested:
LEARN
7% chance
Suggested:
PLIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.1% →
NOIRE 5.93 bits
10.8% →
LEARN 5.48 bits
7.3% →
PLIER 5.36 bits
6.0% →
MORNE 4.78 bits
5.9% →
CLONE 4.90 bits
5.4% →
REFIT 4.97 bits
3.9% →
CHARE 4.63 bits
3.5% →
SLIER 4.64 bits
2.9% →
ALERT 4.73 bits
2.7% →
CLONE 4.93 bits

Research on TABUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TABUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,528 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,725 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 TAHBUUS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TABUS is a kind of bias or inhibition.

Synonyms out prohibited forbidden TABOO sacred

Opposites permissible

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TABUS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).