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

FORDO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fɔː(ɹ)ˈduː/

Verb

To kill, destroy.

Verb

To annul, abolish, cancel.

Alternative forms: foredo

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

Etymology

From Middle English fordon, from Old English fordōn (“to undo, bring to naught, ruin, destroy, abolish, kill, corrupt, seduce, defile”), from Proto-West Germanic *fradōn (“to ruin, destroy”), equivalent to for- + do. Cognate with Saterland Frisian ferdwo (“to waste, consume”), West Frisian ferdwaan (“to waste”), Dutch verdoen (“to kill, waste”), German Low German verdoon (“to waste, consume”), German vertun (“to waste, spend, consume”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use FORDO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 84.4% 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 FORDO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FORDO 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 65.6% of games, misses completely in 34.4%, and leaves about 373 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,282 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 FORDO 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.

3.81 Entropy (bits)
373 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FORDO 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#10,282 Rank among openers
Opening with FORDO left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,282 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
751
4 guesses
1,277
5 guesses
270
6 guesses
11

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
27%
All gray
34%

Feedback distribution

FORDO can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

821 answers
355 answers
144 answers
127 answers
119 answers
103 answers
95 answers
67 answers
60 answers
39 answers
39 answers
37 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4O1R1D2O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing FORDO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FORDO:

34% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
15% chance
Suggested:
TEASE
6% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.4% →
SLATE 6.35 bits
14.9% →
TEASE 5.44 bits
6.0% →
SLANE 5.37 bits
5.3% →
ANILE 5.43 bits
5.0% →
TUILE 4.66 bits
4.3% →
CASTE 4.98 bits
4.0% →
ATONE 4.39 bits
2.8% →
DRIED 4.79 bits
2.5% →
LIANE 4.82 bits
1.6% →
ANISE 4.23 bits

Research on FORDO

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

Optimal play

Opening with FORDO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,178 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 FORDO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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
FORDO 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).