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To solve Wordle in fewer guesses, make each turn do useful work: start with a playable word containing distinct, common letters, then use the color feedback to narrow the possibilities without ignoring known positions. There is no universally best opener; the answer depends on the word list, the strategy’s goal, and whether you play Hard Mode.
What is the best word to start Wordle?
There is no single starter that wins under every definition of “best.” A word can perform well by lowering the average number of guesses, protecting against a difficult worst-case answer, maximizing the chance of an immediate solve, or simply being easy to remember and use consistently. Rankings also depend on the modeled answer list and whether later guesses must obey every revealed clue.
In an exact dynamic-programming model, Dimitris Bertsimas and Alex Paskov found that SALET minimized expected guesses for their setup. Starting with SALET, their model solved every modeled hidden word in at most five guesses and averaged 3.421 guesses. These are results for the paper’s modeled game, not a promise about the current daily NYT puzzle. Read the paper in Operations Research.
Other methods produce different picks. A Tom’s Guide analysis updated September 2, 2026, ranked SOARE, ROATE, and RAISE highly using letter scores; because ROATE was not in the answer set it considered, the article presents RAISE as an option that also retains a chance of a first-guess solve. It also reports WordleBot recommendations including SLATE, CRANE, and TRACE, noting that recommendations have shifted. These are dated, model-specific recommendations, not official NYT rules. See the analysis and its method.
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For a human player, SLATE, CRANE, TRACE, STARE, or another familiar word can be a sensible choice if it tests several distinct, common letters. In a 2022 NYT report, WordleBot co-creator Matthew Conlen said of CRANE and SLATE: “I think either makes for a great starting word. The difference between best and second-best is tiny.” The NYT report also found that, among players with more than 10 games between June 15 and August 22, 2022, 28% used the same starting word at least 90% of the time. That historical behavior does not establish which starter is strongest today.
How to compare starting words
- Expected guesses: How many turns the method takes on average under its chosen answer list and probability assumptions.
- Worst-case reliability: How many guesses a difficult feedback path might require.
- Information: How effectively the word splits the possible answers across different color patterns.
- Answer eligibility: Whether the opener itself can be a solution in the model being used.
- Mode and practicality: Whether the method works in Hard Mode and whether you can remember and use the word consistently.
How do I solve Wordle in fewer guesses?
The reported standard game asks you to find a five-letter daily word in six tries. Treat each guess as either a candidate solution or a way to learn something that makes later choices clearer. After the first row, the useful question is not just “What word seems likely?” but “Which guess best separates the answers still possible?”
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1. Begin with a useful, playable word
Choose a familiar word with several distinct letters that occur often in plausible answers. Avoid spending an early turn repeating a letter unless you have a reason to test whether it appears more than once. The aim is not to memorize an allegedly perfect opener; it is to get informative feedback while keeping the process easy to repeat.
ADIEU is popular because it tests several vowels, but testing vowels alone does not automatically make it the best opener: it leaves many consonants untested. The NYT’s 2022 account reported that ADIEU was used by an average of 5% of players each day in its June 15–August 22 sample. That is a measure of player behavior, not proof of strategic superiority.
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2. Turn each color into a constraint
- Green: Keep that letter in the confirmed position in later guesses.
- Yellow: Keep the letter in consideration, but put it in a different position.
- Gray: Usually treat the letter as absent, while taking care not to over-eliminate possibilities when a guess contained a repeated letter.
Do not discard a candidate just because one row seems to rule it out if the guess included duplicate letters. Duplicate-letter feedback can be less intuitive than feedback for a single occurrence; the sources cited here do not establish a detailed current NYT scoring specification for that case. When in doubt, check the candidate against the complete pattern rather than relying on a quick mental interpretation of one square.
3. Make the second guess earn its turn
If the first guess reveals little, use the second to test untried common letters and, where useful, missing vowels. Preserve greens and place yellows in other positions. A complementary probe may be more valuable than another guess chosen only because it looks like a likely answer.
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Chris Rand, a Wordle player quoted by the NYT in 2022, described the appeal this way: “For me, Wordle is largely about how much information is collected on the second guess.” That is a player’s perspective, not an official rule, but it captures a useful decision: choose a second word that helps distinguish the remaining possibilities. In a 2022 simulation using a 2,315-answer set, Chao-Lin Liu reported that a specified strategy averaged 3.674 guesses and failed 0.65% of the time, compared with a baseline average of 4.078 guesses that needed more than six trials 1.77% of the time. Those figures belong to that preprint’s simulator and answer set, not current player outcomes or the live NYT list. Read the preprint.
4. Stop probing broadly when the answer set is small
When feedback leaves only a few plausible answers, switch from general letter coverage to distinguishing those candidates. If several possibilities share the same known pattern, choose a word that separates them rather than spending a turn testing letters that cannot resolve the remaining choice. In regular mode, an informative probe need not be a likely solution; in Hard Mode, the available guesses are constrained by the clues already revealed.
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What changes in Hard Mode?
Hard Mode makes strategy a different problem because revealed clues constrain subsequent guesses. A broad information-gathering word that ignores a known green or fails to use a known yellow may be available in regular play but not in a Hard Mode strategy. As a result, a recommendation based on unrestricted probing should not be assumed to apply unchanged to Hard Mode.
Before comparing a strategy or a starter ranking, check which mode it models. The exact-solution paper and other analyses use defined setups; their results are not interchangeable with a human strategy under every mode and objective. The Bertsimas–Paskov paper treats the modeled optimization problem explicitly.
Why do published starting-word rankings disagree?
Wordle strategy studies answer different questions. One may minimize expected guesses over a fixed answer set; another may score letter frequency; a bot may weigh its own model and settings; a human may prefer a word that is easy to recall. A word with a strong average can still have an awkward branch, and an information-rich probe may not be the most likely answer.
For example, Tom’s Guide’s 2026 analysis gives answer-letter frequencies of E 53.3%, A 42.2%, R 38.8%, O 32.6%, and T 31.6% in the answer set used for its calculations. Those percentages describe that guide’s list, not official current NYT statistics. The figures help explain why words containing common letters can be informative, but frequency alone does not account for how feedback patterns divide the remaining candidates.
Use a recommendation only with its date, answer list, mode, and objective in mind. The 3.421 average for SALET comes from a specific exact model; WordleBot’s reported suggestions and letter-score rankings come from other methods. Neither should be presented as a universal guarantee.
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