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

TOMBO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A traditional sweet beer made from the bamboo palm.

Noun

Albacore, longfin tuna (Thunnus alalunga)

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 TOMBO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TOMBO 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 63.2% of games, misses completely in 36.8%, and leaves about 409 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,598 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 TOMBO 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.

3.66 Entropy (bits)
409 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.29 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOMBO 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,598 Rank among openers
Opening with TOMBO left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,598 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
754
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
281
6 guesses
17
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
2 vowels
Common:
OT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
22%
All gray
37%

Feedback distribution

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

873 answers
327 answers
179 answers
132 answers
127 answers
127 answers
97 answers
61 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1M3B3O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing TOMBO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOMBO:

37% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
14% chance
Suggested:
SALET
8% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.8%
RAILE 6.19 bits
13.8%
SALET 5.68 bits
7.5%
CRANE 5.45 bits
5.6%
CARLE 4.79 bits
5.3%
RAILE 5.59 bits
5.3%
CARLE 5.51 bits
4.1%
RAINE 5.19 bits
2.6%
SLART 4.29 bits
1.4%
ALURE 4.35 bits
1.3%
LAIRY 3.93 bits

Research on TOMBO

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOMBO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,435 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,909 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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 TOHMBOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TOMBO 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).