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

FESTA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfɛstə/

Noun

A public holiday or feast day in Italy, Portugal, etc.

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 FESTA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FESTA 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 86.8% of games, misses completely in 13.2%, and leaves about 134 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,414 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 FESTA 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.

4.96 Entropy (bits)
134 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 81% of evaluated openers
0.99 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FESTA 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#3,414 Rank among openers
Opening with FESTA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,414 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
858
4 guesses
1,245
5 guesses
158
6 guesses
11
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
25%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

FESTA can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

314 answers
258 answers
229 answers
148 answers
110 answers
101 answers
96 answers
92 answers
85 answers
82 answers
77 answers
59 answers
43 answers
42 answers
38 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4E1S1T1A1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing FESTA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FESTA:

13% chance
Suggested:
COULD
11% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
10% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.2%
COULD 5.58 bits
10.9%
DROLE 5.32 bits
9.6%
CAROL 5.32 bits
6.2%
LARGE 4.70 bits
4.6%
SPOIL 4.86 bits
4.3%
COUNT 5.05 bits
4.0%
PRONE 4.69 bits
3.9%
GENRE 4.24 bits
3.6%
TAINT 4.52 bits
3.5%
SHALY 4.43 bits

Research on FESTA

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

Optimal play

Opening with FESTA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,702 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 FESTA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 FEHSTUH.

Rhymes with VESTA TESTA PESTA

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FESTA 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).