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

FAINE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete spelling of fane.

Adjective

Obsolete spelling of fain.

Adverb

Obsolete spelling of fain.

Verb

Obsolete spelling of fain.

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

Use FAINE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% 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 FAINE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FAINE 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 87.8% of games, misses completely in 12.2%, and leaves about 113 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,888 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 FAINE 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.

5.21 Entropy (bits)
113 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAINE 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#3,888 Rank among openers
Opening with FAINE left 2 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 3.65 average. It ranks #3,888 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
890
4 guesses
1,177
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
44%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

FAINE can come back 114 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

290 answers
234 answers
191 answers
123 answers
117 answers
111 answers
105 answers
88 answers
72 answers
59 answers
51 answers
47 answers
43 answers
43 answers
43 answers
42 answers
39 answers
39 answers
36 answers
33 answers
32 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1I1N1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing FAINE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAINE:

12% chance
Suggested:
SURLY
10% chance
Suggested:
SETER
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.2% →
SURLY 5.63 bits
9.8% →
SETER 5.53 bits
8.0% →
SLART 5.41 bits
5.2% →
SOREE 4.66 bits
4.9% →
DROIT 4.83 bits
4.7% →
SATYR 4.06 bits
4.4% →
SLART 4.92 bits
3.7% →
SLART 4.39 bits
3.0% →
SLART 4.47 bits
2.5% →
TWEEN 4.23 bits

Research on FAINE

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAINE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,012 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 FAINE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
FAINE 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).