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

FUMED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fjuːmd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of fume

Adjective

Of wood, treated with ammonia fumes to darken its colour and enhance its grain pattern.

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it FYOOMD.

Related meanings

Synonyms treated

Opposites untreated

Use FUMED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% 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 FUMED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FUMED 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 74.0% of games, misses completely in 26.0%, and leaves about 279 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,874 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 FUMED 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.

4.16 Entropy (bits)
279 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FUMED 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#8,874 Rank among openers
Opening with FUMED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #8,874 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
778
4 guesses
1,279
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
11

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
30%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

FUMED can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

621 answers
423 answers
195 answers
117 answers
97 answers
83 answers
83 answers
81 answers
60 answers
55 answers
54 answers
45 answers
28 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4U1M3E1D2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing FUMED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FUMED:

26% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
18% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.0% →
SAINT 6.05 bits
17.7% →
SLART 5.77 bits
8.2% →
SOLAR 4.64 bits
4.9% →
SLANT 5.20 bits
4.1% →
ROAST 5.01 bits
3.5% →
DEARE 4.71 bits
3.5% →
SLART 4.44 bits
3.4% →
DAIRY 4.76 bits
2.5% →
TIARE 4.60 bits
2.3% →
SLART 4.78 bits

Research on FUMED

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

Optimal play

Opening with FUMED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,738 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 FUMED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
FUMED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with smell (3.4 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).