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

FAENA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɑˈeɪ.nə/

Noun

A series of passes performed by a matador with a muleta or a sword before the kill.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Borrowed from Spanish faena. Doublet of hacienda and fazenda.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use FAENA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How FAENA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FAENA 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 217 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,717 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 FAENA 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
217 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAENA 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,717 Rank among openers
Opening with FAENA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,717 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
717
4 guesses
1,279
5 guesses
287
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
34%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

FAENA can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

479 answers
396 answers
194 answers
152 answers
116 answers
109 answers
95 answers
94 answers
85 answers
81 answers
46 answers
43 answers
35 answers
33 answers
31 answers
26 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1E1N1A1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing FAENA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAENA:

20% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
17% chance
Suggested:
SIREE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.1% →
SOILY 5.62 bits
16.6% →
SIREE 5.26 bits
8.1% →
SLART 5.33 bits
6.4% →
SLART 4.98 bits
4.9% →
SATYR 4.11 bits
4.6% →
SIREE 4.58 bits
4.0% →
SONIC 4.74 bits
3.9% →
SETER 4.80 bits
3.6% →
LATER 3.98 bits
3.4% →
SOILY 4.37 bits

Research on FAENA

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAENA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,553 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with FAENA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FAENA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).