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

FAVEL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

yellow or dun in colour

Noun

A horse of a favel or dun colour.

Noun

flattery; cajolery; deceit

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

Etymology

From Old French fauvel, favel, diminutive of Old French fauve; of German origin. See fallow (adjective).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use FAVEL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% 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 FAVEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FAVEL 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 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 191 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,929 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 FAVEL 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.

4.56 Entropy (bits)
191 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FAVEL 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,929 Rank among openers
Opening with FAVEL 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 3.76 average. It ranks #9,929 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
750
4 guesses
1,256
5 guesses
276
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEL

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

FAVEL can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

466 answers
298 answers
203 answers
149 answers
145 answers
142 answers
140 answers
76 answers
70 answers
53 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4A1V4E1L1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing FAVEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FAVEL:

20% chance
Suggested:
HOIST
12% chance
Suggested:
RINSE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.5% →
HOIST 5.89 bits
12.5% →
RINSE 5.34 bits
8.5% →
TRAIN 5.25 bits
6.2% →
SENOR 4.46 bits
6.1% →
REAST 4.91 bits
6.0% →
RONTE 4.07 bits
5.9% →
SOILY 4.84 bits
3.2% →
TOILE 4.31 bits
2.9% →
PLANT 4.37 bits
2.2% →
PLATE 3.94 bits

Research on FAVEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with FAVEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #7,999 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 FAVEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76; proven optimal play reaches 3.75. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
FAVEL 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).