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

FAUGH

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɔː/

Interjection

An exclamation of contempt, or of disgust, especially for a smell.

Alternative forms: faw, fough

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

Use FAUGH in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% 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 FAUGH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FAUGH 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 72.4% of games, misses completely in 27.6%, and leaves about 290 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,619 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 FAUGH 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
290 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAUGH 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,619 Rank among openers
Opening with FAUGH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,619 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
790
4 guesses
1,247
5 guesses
260
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
30%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

FAUGH can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

658 answers
380 answers
203 answers
165 answers
109 answers
82 answers
79 answers
57 answers
56 answers
54 answers
53 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1U1G2H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing FAUGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAUGH:

28% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
16% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
9% chance
Suggested:
SLYER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.6% →
SOREL 5.95 bits
15.9% →
ALERT 5.54 bits
8.5% →
SLYER 4.77 bits
6.9% →
SLIER 5.12 bits
4.6% →
TORSE 5.56 bits
3.4% →
STOLE 4.72 bits
3.3% →
TRONE 5.05 bits
2.4% →
SCARE 4.45 bits
2.3% →
ALINE 4.68 bits
2.3% →
RONTE 4.61 bits

Research on FAUGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,263 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 FAUGH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
FAUGH 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).