Learn Spanish (Latin America): ¿Dónde habrá dejado la aguja el sastre? - Where could the tailor have left the needle?

In Spanish, the future perfect is often used to express a guess, doubt, or conjecture about something that already happened. While habrá dejado literally means will have left, in this context it means could have left, must have left, or I wonder where he left. It shows the speaker is speculating about a recent past event.

Could we use the conditional perfect (habría dejado) here since it also translates to could have left?

No, because the conditional perfect is used for hypothetical situations that did not actually happen, such as if X had happened, Y would have happened. Here, the tailor definitely left the needle somewhere, and we are just trying to guess where it is right now. For this kind of guessing about a real past action, you need the future perfect (habrá dejado).

Why is the subject (el sastre) at the very end of the sentence?

In Spanish questions, it is very common to invert the subject and verb. When you have a question word like Dónde followed by a compound verb (habrá dejado) and a direct object (la aguja), putting the subject (el sastre) at the end is the most natural word order. Saying Dónde el sastre habrá dejado sounds clunky to a native speaker.

If the tailor were a woman, would the word be la sastra?