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

TSUBA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TSUBA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtsubə//ˈsubə/

Noun

The guard at the end of the grip of a Japanese sword or bladed weapon.

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 TSUBA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TSUBA 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 202 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,819 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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___A T in the 1st position and A in the 5th position T__B_ T in the 1st position and B in the 4th position _S__A S in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TSUBA 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.

4.44 Entropy (bits)
202 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TSUBA 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,819 Rank among openers
Opening with TSUBA 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,819 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
835
4 guesses
1,230
5 guesses
213
6 guesses
16
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
17%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

TSUBA can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

477 answers
358 answers
183 answers
128 answers
121 answers
114 answers
102 answers
82 answers
71 answers
62 answers
62 answers
59 answers
52 answers
42 answers
42 answers
40 answers
33 answers
27 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1S1U1B3A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

NOIRE CARNE PLIER REFIT SHALE CARLE

Strategy after playing TSUBA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TSUBA:

20% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
15% chance
Suggested:
CARNE
8% 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
15.1% →
CARNE 5.51 bits
7.7% →
PLIER 5.36 bits
5.4% →
REFIT 4.97 bits
5.1% →
SHALE 4.70 bits
4.8% →
PLIER 4.86 bits
4.3% →
CARLE 5.02 bits
3.5% →
STIRE 4.53 bits
3.0% →
CLINE 5.10 bits
2.6% →
DROLE 4.82 bits

Research on TSUBA

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

Optimal play

Opening with TSUBA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,169 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,851 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, 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.

How it sounds

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TSUBA 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.

In a sentence

He removed the tsuba from his samurai sword.
© tatoeba.org contributor Cabo (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).