Possible answer Not used yet F tier for first-turn info

FAUNA

FAUNA is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 87.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfɔːnə/

Noun

Animals considered as a group; especially those of a particular country, region, time, biological group, etc.

“the flora and fauna”

Noun

A particular group of animals as distinguished from another.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 FAUNA performs as a guess

FAUNA is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 70.9% of games, misses completely in 29.1%, and leaves about 306 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,984 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 FAUNA 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.

3.92 Entropy (bits)
306 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
87.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.03 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAUNA 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,984 Rank among openers
Opening with FAUNA 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 3.81 average. It ranks #11,984 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
708
4 guesses
1,278
5 guesses
308
6 guesses
18
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
3 vowels
Common:
ANU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
32%
All gray
29%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
M A N G A
F A U N A

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches FAUNA in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

FAUNA can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

691 answers
347 answers
182 answers
180 answers
173 answers
88 answers
77 answers
66 answers
56 answers
52 answers
44 answers
39 answers
36 answers
30 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1U1N1A1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing FAUNA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAUNA:

29% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
15% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLYER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.1%
TORSE 6.09 bits
14.6%
SLATE 5.64 bits
7.7%
SLYER 4.82 bits
7.6%
TORSE 4.85 bits
7.3%
SILER 5.16 bits
3.7%
CLOSE 4.93 bits
3.2%
GORSE 4.62 bits
2.8%
GRISE 4.54 bits
2.4%
TOILE 4.86 bits
2.2%
CONTE 4.10 bits

Research on FAUNA

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAUNA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,126 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 FAUNA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 FAWNUH.

Rhymes with SAUNA

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, FAUNA is a kind of collection or being.

Synonyms animal BEAST creature BRUTE zoology

Opposites FLORA

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FAUNA sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

In a sentence

Our country has a beautiful fauna.
© tatoeba.org contributor carlosalberto (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I'm interested in northern fauna.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).