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

ZABRA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 83.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzɑbɹə//ˈzɑːbɹɑː/

Noun

A small sailing vessel used off the coasts of Spain and Portugal.

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 ZABRA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZABRA 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 66.5% of games, misses completely in 33.5%, and leaves about 398 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,160 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.91 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 ZABRA 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.

3.47 Entropy (bits)
398 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZABRA 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.

3.91 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,160 Rank among openers
Opening with ZABRA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.91 average. It ranks #14,160 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
612
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
423
6 guesses
32
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:
AR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
23%
All gray
34%

Feedback distribution

ZABRA can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

796 answers
394 answers
298 answers
156 answers
129 answers
85 answers
75 answers
72 answers
44 answers
40 answers
26 answers
26 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10A1B3R1A1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing ZABRA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZABRA:

34% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
17% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.5%
TOILE 6.08 bits
16.6%
TOISE 5.34 bits
12.6%
SLATE 5.66 bits
6.6%
SINCE 4.59 bits
5.4%
LEAST 4.51 bits
3.6%
TOILE 5.00 bits
3.2%
TOISE 4.63 bits
3.0%
PORTE 4.07 bits
1.9%
SHOTE 3.97 bits
1.7%
SUITE 4.37 bits

Research on ZABRA

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZABRA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,122 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.05 guesses at best and is rank #6,815 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.91, at or below the proven-optimal 3.92, 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 ZAHBRUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.