FETID
Yes, FETID was the Wordle answer on October 27, 2025 (Wordle #1591).
As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈfɛtɪd/
- Adjective
-
Foul-smelling, stinking.
“I caught the fetid odor of dirty socks.”
- Adjective
-
Unpleasant.
- Noun
-
The foul-smelling asafoetida plant, or its extracts.
Alternative forms: foetid, fœtid
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: October 27, 2025 (#1591).
See the full page for that puzzle: October 27, 2025 (#1591).
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 FETID performs as a guess
FETID 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 80.9% of games, misses completely in 19.1%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,750 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 FETID 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 FETID 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches FETID in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
FETID can come back 102 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 FETID; 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 FETID
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to FETID.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing FETID:
Research on FETID
Game-tree analysis and word research for FETID, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with FETID, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,123 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 FETID can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 FEHTUHD.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- FETID 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.
In a sentence
The fetid smell came from the dead rat in the corner.
Tom gave off a foul, fetid stench, but Mary pretended not to notice.
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).