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

FUSEL

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Ellipsis of fusel oil

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

Use FUSEL in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% 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 FUSEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FUSEL 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 82.0% of games, misses completely in 18.0%, and leaves about 168 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,658 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 FUSEL 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.

4.77 Entropy (bits)
168 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FUSEL 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,658 Rank among openers
Opening with FUSEL 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 3.68 average. It ranks #5,658 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
863
4 guesses
1,190
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

FUSEL can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

429 answers
299 answers
164 answers
152 answers
135 answers
121 answers
111 answers
74 answers
73 answers
51 answers
51 answers
47 answers
43 answers
35 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4U1S1E1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing FUSEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FUSEL:

18% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
13% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0% →
TRAIN 6.03 bits
12.5% →
TIARE 5.38 bits
6.9% →
ROAST 5.31 bits
6.4% →
OATER 4.23 bits
5.7% →
ALLOY 4.90 bits
5.1% →
ROAST 4.75 bits
4.7% →
TABLE 4.48 bits
3.1% →
RAINY 3.96 bits
3.1% →
COURT 4.92 bits
2.1% →
TRICE 4.19 bits

Research on FUSEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with FUSEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,551 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 FUSEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
FUSEL 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).