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

FIFER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

One who plays on a fife.

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

Etymology

From fife + -er. Piecewise doublet of piper.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it FYFUR.

Rhymes with LIFER

Use FIFER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.1% 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 FIFER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FIFER 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 78.7% of games, misses completely in 21.3%, and leaves about 236 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,566 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 FIFER 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.

4.13 Entropy (bits)
236 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FIFER 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#12,566 Rank among openers
Opening with FIFER left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,566 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
698
4 guesses
1,222
5 guesses
358
6 guesses
20

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
28%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

FIFER can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

508 answers
355 answers
245 answers
188 answers
175 answers
110 answers
100 answers
94 answers
89 answers
71 answers
35 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4I1F4E1R1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing FIFER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FIFER:

21% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
15% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
10% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.3% →
SAULT 5.88 bits
14.9% →
SLATE 5.73 bits
10.3% →
COAST 5.50 bits
7.9% →
SLANT 5.56 bits
7.3% →
TEASE 4.77 bits
4.6% →
SLANT 4.60 bits
4.2% →
COAST 3.59 bits
3.9% →
SALTY 4.23 bits
3.7% →
SLANT 4.51 bits
3.0% →
PRINT 4.22 bits

Research on FIFER

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

Optimal play

Opening with FIFER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,049 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 FIFER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FIFER 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).