FATWA
FATWA is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈfætwɑː//-wə//ˈfætwɑ/
- Noun
-
A formal legal decree, opinion, or ruling issued by a mufti or other Islamic judicial authority.
“The website contains fatwas on points of Islamic law that arise in court cases.”
- Noun
-
A decree issued by a mufti or other Islamic judicial authority that a person should be put to death, usually as punishment for committing apostasy or blasphemy.
- Verb
-
To issue a fatwa (noun sense 1) against (someone); specifically (loosely, erroneous), a fatwa imposing a ban or a death sentence.
Alternative forms: fetwa, fetwah, fatwah, futwa
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
The noun is borrowed from Arabic فَتْوَى (fatwā, “formal legal opinion”), the verbal noun of أَفْتَى (ʔaftā, “to deliver a formal opinion”) (whence مُفْتٍ (muftin, “mufti”), the active participle of the same verb: see mufti).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it FAHTWAH.
Use FATWA in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 83.6% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How FATWA performs as a guess
Wordle accepts FATWA 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 65.6% of games, misses completely in 34.4%, and leaves about 392 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,835 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe FATWA 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How FATWA 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
FATWA can come back 63 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for FATWA; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing FATWA
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to FATWA.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing FATWA:
Research on FATWA
Game-tree analysis and word research for FATWA, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with FATWA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,365 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 FATWA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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
- FATWA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).