5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

FUGUE

Yes, FUGUE was the Wordle answer on November 9, 2025 (Wordle #1604).

As an opener, it rules out about 83.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with FUGUE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfyɡ//ˈfjuːɡ/

Noun

A contrapuntal piece of music wherein a particular melody is played in a number of voices, each voice introduced in turn by playing the melody.

Noun

Anything in literature, poetry, film, painting, etc., that resembles a fugue in structure or in its elaborate complexity and formality.

Verb

To improvise, in singing, by introducing vocal ornamentation to fill gaps etc.

Verb

To spend time in a dissociative fugue state.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: November 9, 2025 (#1604).

See the full page for that puzzle: November 9, 2025 (#1604).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How FUGUE performs as a guess

FUGUE 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 68.2% of games, misses completely in 31.8%, and leaves about 389 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,740 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

F___E F in the 1st position and E in the 5th position F__U_ F in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _U__E U in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in FUGUE.

First-turn measures

All four describe FUGUE 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.

3.58 Entropy (bits)
389 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
83.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 9% of evaluated openers
2.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FUGUE 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,740 Rank among openers
Opening with FUGUE 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 3.88 average. It ranks #13,740 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
642
4 guesses
1,249
5 guesses
391
6 guesses
28
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
34%
All gray
32%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I N G
A W F U L
F U G U E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches FUGUE in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

FUGUE can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

754 answers
488 answers
269 answers
106 answers
103 answers
89 answers
56 answers
53 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
24 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4U1G2U1E1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

TRAIL ALTER ROAST CLARY SLANT ROANY

Strategy after playing FUGUE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FUGUE:

32% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
21% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
11% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.8% →
TRAIL 5.89 bits
20.6% →
ALTER 5.25 bits
11.3% →
ROAST 5.07 bits
4.5% →
CLARY 4.21 bits
4.3% →
SLANT 4.95 bits
3.7% →
ROANY 5.03 bits
2.4% →
SLART 4.82 bits
2.2% →
ARIEL 3.95 bits
1.4% →
SCOUT 4.38 bits
1.4% →
SLART 3.81 bits

Research on FUGUE

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

Optimal play

Opening with FUGUE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,084 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.10 guesses at best and is rank #7,142 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.92, 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

One syllable Say it FYOOG.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, FUGUE is a kind of disturbance or status.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FUGUE 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).