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

FOEHN

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɜːn//feɪn//fɝn/

Noun

A warm dry wind blowing down the north sides of the Alps, especially in Switzerland.

Noun

A similar katabatic wind developing on the lee side of a mountain.

Alternative forms: foen, föhn, fohn

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

Etymology

Borrowed from German Föhn, from Old High German phonno, from Vulgar Latin faōnius, an alteration of Latin favōnius (“west wind”), from Favōnius (“Roman wind god”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use FOEHN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% 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 FOEHN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FOEHN 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 82.7% of games, misses completely in 17.3%, and leaves about 197 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,183 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 FOEHN 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
197 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FOEHN 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,183 Rank among openers
Opening with FOEHN left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,183 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
845
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
229
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
30%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

FOEHN can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

435 answers
412 answers
153 answers
141 answers
114 answers
102 answers
101 answers
90 answers
69 answers
61 answers
59 answers
34 answers
33 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
30 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4O1E1H4N1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing FOEHN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FOEHN:

18% chance
Suggested:
REATE
17% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
6% chance
Suggested:
ACTOR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.2% →
REATE 5.62 bits
17.3% →
TRAIL 5.95 bits
6.4% →
ACTOR 4.97 bits
5.9% →
GAUNT 5.07 bits
4.8% →
SHART 5.05 bits
4.3% →
SADLY 4.53 bits
4.2% →
SLART 5.10 bits
3.8% →
RAISE 4.62 bits
2.9% →
PRATE 4.26 bits
2.6% →
SWORE 3.55 bits

Research on FOEHN

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

Optimal play

Opening with FOEHN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,107 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,815 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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
FOEHN 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).