E is the most common letter in Wordle answers. In NYT Game Solver’s analysis of 1,810 tracked answers, E appears in 47% of answers, followed by A at 40.3% and R at 36.2%. Those figures describe how often a letter shows up anywhere in an answer. They do not tell you where the letter is most likely to sit, and the answer list they describe is not an official, current NYT dataset, so the exact numbers should be read with the caveats below.
Overall letter frequency
Frequency here means the share of answers that contain a letter at least once. A letter that appears twice in one answer is counted once. The top five in NYT Game Solver’s 1,810-answer set are:
| Rank | Letter | Share of answers containing it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | E | 47% |
| 2 | A | 40.3% |
| 3 | R | 36.2% |
| 4 | O | 30.3% |
| 5 | T | 29.9% |
Source: NYT Game Solver, “The Anatomy of Wordle Answers: Letter & Pattern Stats”, accessed 2026. The page does not state a publication year.
Most common letter in each position
Position matters as much as overall frequency. The same site’s position counts, again across 1,810 answers, show which letter leads each of the five slots:
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#1 Best Overall
| Position | Leading letter | Share of answers with that letter in this position |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (first letter) | S | 14.8% |
| 2 | A | 12.7% |
| 3 | A | 14.5% |
| 4 | E | 13% |
| 5 (last letter) | E | 19.8% |
The position figures are shares per slot, so they will not add up to the overall percentages above. A letter can lead overall frequency while another letter leads a particular slot, which is why both views are useful.
How to use frequency when you guess
Frequency and position answer two different questions:
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- Does this letter appear at all? Use the overall table. E, A, and R are the most likely to be somewhere in the answer.
- Where is this letter likely to sit? Use the position table. S is the most typical first letter, A is most typical in the middle slots, and E is most typical at the end.
Common letters placed in typical slots are a reasonable heuristic. They are not a guarantee, and a word that uses only the most common letters can still leave many candidates in play. The opener section below explains why.
Repeated letters
Words with a doubled letter are less rare than many players expect, and the sources disagree on how often they occur. Two counts are relevant:
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- Tom’s Guide (2026), 2,309-answer analysis: 748 of 2,309 answers contain a repeated letter, which is about 32.4% by calculation. The article’s own gloss of “about 15%” does not match its count, so use the count rather than that percentage. E is the most frequent doubled letter, appearing doubled in 172 answers. See Tom’s Guide, “I analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns — here’s what I found”.
- NYT Game Solver, 1,810-answer analysis: 30.9% of answers repeat a letter.
The two sets differ in size and date range, so their percentages should not be averaged or treated as one estimate. Either way, a guess that tests many distinct letters can still miss a repeated letter in the answer, so a repeat should stay on your list of possibilities when the feedback points to one.
Choosing an opening word
The most common letters are not automatically the best opener. NYT Game Solver’s opening-word ranking tests each candidate opener against all 1,810 answers. For each opener, it scores the expected number of answers still possible after the green, yellow, and gray feedback. Under that method, IRATE ranks first, with an average of about 47.6 remaining candidates. This is a result of that site’s calculation, not an official NYT recommendation, and it applies to its answer set.
Rank #4
When two opener recommendations disagree, check these five things:
- Corpus: Which answer list and date range were tested?
- Objective: Is the goal an immediate hit, the most information from feedback, or the fewest candidates left?
- Position: Are common letters placed in slots where they usually occur?
- Duplicate handling: Does the scoring follow Wordle’s rules for repeated letters?
- Scope: Was the analysis run on the answer list, on all valid guesses, or on a wider five-letter dictionary?
How much to trust these numbers
The figures above come from third-party analyses, not from an official, complete NYT dataset. Three limits matter:
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- Different answer sets. NYT Game Solver tracks 1,810 answers, while Tom’s Guide analyzed 2,309. These are not interchangeable, so compare numbers only within the same source.
- Date cutoff. A 2025 paper in the Journal of Information Science and Technology built positional letter frequencies from the first Wordle through 2024-12-31. Its model assumes the valid-word dataset did not change through that date and ignores pairings between neighboring letters. Answers added after that date are outside its data.
- Editorial changes. Rankings can shift if the answer list changes. The figures here are a snapshot as of 2026-10-08 for the sources named, not a live ranking.
In short: E is the most common letter in the reviewed answer sets, followed by A and R. Use the position table to decide where those letters are most useful, and use the opener comparison criteria before adopting any single “best” first word.
No named-person quotations are used here because none were verified in the sources.
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