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.

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Ellipsis of fusel oil

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

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 167 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)
167 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 70% of evaluated openers
1.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

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
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

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:

428 answers
298 answers
163 answers
151 answers
135 answers
121 answers
111 answers
73 answers
72 answers
51 answers
50 answers
47 answers
43 answers
34 answers
32 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
14 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:
TRADE
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
12.6%
TRADE 5.52 bits
6.9%
ROAST 5.32 bits
6.4%
OATER 4.24 bits
5.7%
ALLOY 4.90 bits
5.1%
ROAST 4.75 bits
4.7%
TABLE 4.48 bits
3.1%
RAINY 3.98 bits
3.0%
COURT 4.88 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it FYOOSUHL. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).