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Chissà dove hanno lasciato la scopa. L'avranno messa nel ripostiglio.

Chissà dove hanno lasciato la scopa. L'avranno messa nel ripostiglio.
Who knows where they left the broom. They must have put it in the closet.
From Lesson 217:Future tenses for guesses and probability·Italian

Questions & Answers about Chissà dove hanno lasciato la scopa. L'avranno messa nel ripostiglio.

Why is avranno messa (future perfect) used here if the action of putting the broom away already happened?
This is the epistemic future. In Italian, you use the future perfect to make a guess, assumption, or deduction about a past event. While it literally translates to "they will have put," it is actually used to mean "they probably put" or "they must have put" the broom in the closet.
Why does the participle messo change to messa in l'avranno messa?
In compound tenses like the future perfect, the past participle must agree with a preceding direct object pronoun. Because l' stands for la scopa (a feminine singular noun), the participle changes its ending to match, becoming messa.
What exactly is the L' attached to avranno?
It is the direct object pronoun la meaning "it" (referring to the broom). When the pronouns lo or la come right before a compound verb whose auxiliary starts with a vowel or an h, they drop their vowel and become l'.
Is chissà a verb?
It originally comes from combining chi (who) and sa (knows), but today it acts as a single fixed expression. Italians use it all the time to mean "who knows" or "I wonder" when asking a rhetorical question or expressing doubt.

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