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Wordle is a word game that took the world by storm, and it’s become popular among word puzzlers. Each day, The New York Times presents a new Wordle challenge to players, who have six chances to figure out the five-letter word of the day.
A great starting word can be the difference between a win and a loss because it makes you more likely to find one or more correct letters in your initial guess. There are a lot of theories about which starting words are the best and what strategies you should use to win the game.
If you always use the same word when you play for Wordle, why not check out the strategies used by most people to pick the best starting word, and see if yours fits?
In this article, we’ll explore which words are best to start Wordle with, which ones to avoid, and how you can pick your favorite starting word.
The Strategy Behind the Best Words to Start Wordle
Since Wordle became a popular word game across the world, people have been theorizing the best word to start with each day to ensure the best chance of winning. There have been many reports and experiments conducted to determine the most successful starting word.
One of the most common results of all the testing is the word CRANE. Many reports state that CRANE will help you find the correct word quickly because it contains some of the most used letters in the alphabet.
With that in mind, there are a few more words people like to use because they contain common letters: SOARE and SLANE.
According to data based on all the words in the English language, the most common letters that appear are A, E, H, I, L, N, O, R, S, T, and N. The letter that appears the most is E. If you use the strategy of trying the most common consonants and vowels first, it’s a good idea to use a word containing the letter E.
Another popular strategy people use is to lock down any vowels as quickly as possible. Considering there are several vowels in the most common letters list above, it sounds like a good idea. There are many options for five-letter words with several vowels in them.
For those who want to find vowels in their first guess, we recommend you use words such as AUDIO and ADIEU, which contain four vowels and one consonant each. If you want to drop one vowel in favor of another common consonant, you could use the word ALIEN.
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The Best Wordle Start Words
There are over 10,000 words the game will accept as guesses, so which one should you start with? You can use the popular strategies of unique letters, common letters, or as many vowels as possible when you’re picking your words.
Here are ten of the best Wordle starting words:
Salet
Tares
Rates
Crate
Slant
Least
Prate
Roast
Stare
Trace
If you pick any of the words from our list, you’ll notice they all contain at least four of the most often used letters in the alphabet. There are many more words you can create using A, E, H, I, L, N, O, R, S, T, and N, but the words we’ve provided give you a good selection to try out.
Once you’ve found the first letter of the Wordle, check out the other articles on the ProWritingAid blog where we’ve provided many five-letter words starting with each letter of the alphabet.
Wordle Starter Words to Avoid
Now you know what the best starting words are, but what are the worst ones? Which words should you avoid if you want to win at Wordle?
Luckily, the reports that provided the suggestions for the optimal starting word also provided answers for which words to avoid. According to many reports, the word XYLYL (not a word I was familiar with until now) is the worst word you can use to start Wordle.
The main reason to give XYLYL a miss is that it’s only made of three letters and two of them are repeated. Not only that, but there are no vowels at all.
While the solution to Wordle sometimes contains no vowels and can contain repeated letters, it’s not a common occurrence. Most players realize the word has no vowels after their second or third guess. Unfortunately, there’s no indication for whether the solution contains double letters, so that’s something you have to figure out through guessing.
Here are 20 starting words to avoid:
Fuffy
Hyphy
Immix
Jaffa
Jazzy
Jeeze
Jujus
Lymph
Mamma
Oxbow
Phpht
Puppy
Pzazz
Qajaq
Queue
Sooey
Susus
Yukky
Yummy
Zizit
As you can see, picking words with less than five unique letters is unlikely to get you any closer to finding the correct word. If you usually start with any of the words on our list, why not try using one of our words from the best starting words and compare your results?
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How to Pick the Best Starting Words for Wordle
There are three logical strategies to pick from when you’re selecting the best Wordle starting word, which are using unique letters, using the most common letters, and using many vowels.
When you’re trying to pick a starting word, most players agree it’s a good idea to use unique letters to give yourself a better chance of finding green or yellow tiles. Green tiles show a correct letter in the correct position and yellow tiles show a correct letter in the wrong position.
Even if you don’t use the most common letters, you should be in a better position for your second guess.
However, some people believe there isn’t a bad starting word for Wordle, and instead, they say a word like XYLYL simply presents a bigger challenge to find the correct word.
If you don’t fancy starting with a word from the list of words to avoid, you can use the Hard Mode option in the settings on the Wordle site to create a more difficult puzzle to solve. The Hard Mode makes you use any hints revealed in your previous guess within your subsequent guesses.
Despite all the planning, strategizing, and thinking about which starting word you should choose, remember that Wordle is still a game. If you overthink your options, you could risk forgetting that you’re supposed to have fun when working out the daily puzzle.
If you think you’ve cracked it and you’ve got the best starting word, why not share it with your friends and colleagues who also play Wordle to see if they agree with you? Or you can keep it to yourself and have the best score record to boast about.
Remember, if you need inspiration for five-letter words, you can always check out the other articles on the ProWritingAid blog. You can also use the ProWritingAid Word Explorer to check the definition of the Wordle solution if it’s a word you’re unfamiliar with. It’s also a great way to expand your vocabulary.
We hope you have fun, and good luck playing Wordle!
Be confident about grammar
Check every email, essay, or story for grammar mistakes. Fix them before you press send.
