Top 10 Starting words for Wordle
The most common letters
In order to find the best Wordle starting words, we have to figure out the math and science behind the words. There are letters that appear more in English words than others.
Vowels always appear the most, hence why we always guess vowels when we play Hangman.
In this case, we don’t have to figure out how many times a letter appears in the English dictionary, we just need to figure the amount in the Wordle solutions.
The five most common letters in Wordle are E, S, A, R, O. Following those letters are I, L, T, C, D.
Distribution of Wordle solutions containing each letter
| Letter | Usage | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| e | 45.63% | 3.07% | 10.47% | 7.66% | 13.76% | 18.35% |
| a | 39.32% | 6.10% | 13.15% | 13.28% | 7.05% | 2.77% |
| r | 36.20% | 4.54% | 11.55% | 7.05% | 6.58% | 9.17% |
| o | 29.02% | 1.77% | 12.07% | 10.56% | 5.63% | 2.51% |
| t | 28.81% | 6.45% | 3.25% | 4.80% | 6.01% | 10.90% |
| l | 28.03% | 3.81% | 8.70% | 4.85% | 7.01% | 6.75% |
| i | 27.94% | 1.43% | 8.74% | 11.47% | 6.84% | 0.48% |
| s | 26.69% | 15.79% | 0.69% | 3.46% | 7.40% | 1.51% |
| n | 23.70% | 1.56% | 3.72% | 6.01% | 7.83% | 5.63% |
| u | 19.77% | 1.43% | 8.05% | 7.14% | 3.55% | 0.04% |
| c | 19.38% | 8.57% | 1.73% | 2.42% | 6.58% | 1.34% |
| y | 17.99% | 0.26% | 0.95% | 1.25% | 0.13% | 15.75% |
| h | 16.31% | 2.99% | 6.23% | 0.35 | % 1.21% | 5.97% |
| d | 16.00% | 4.80% | 0.87% | 3.25% | 2.99% | 5.11% |
| p | 14.92% | 6.14% | 2.64% | 2.51% | 2.12% | 2.42% |
| g | 12.98% | 4.98% | 0.52% | 2.90% | 3.29% | 1.77% |
| m | 12.85% | 4.63% | 1.64% | 2.60% | 2.94% | 1.82% |
| b | 11.51% | 7.49% | 0.69% | 2.42% | 1.04% | 0.48% |
| f | 8.95% | 5.88% | 0.35% | 1.08% | 1.51% | 1.13% |
| k | 8.74% | 0.87% | 0.43% | 0.52% | 2.38% | 4.89% |
| w | 8.39% | 3.59% | 1.90% | 1.13% | 1.08% | 0.74% |
| v | 6.44% | 1.86% | 0.65% | 2.12% | 1.99% | 0.00% |
| x | 1.56% | 0.00% | 0.61% | 0.52% | 0.13% | 0.30% |
| z | 1.51% | 0.13% | 0.09% | 0.48% | 0.87% | 0.17% |
| q | 1.25% | 1.00% | 0.22% | 0.04% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| j | 1.17% | 0.87% | 0.09% | 0.13% | 0.09% | 0.00 |
All the best starting words ranked mathematically
The most common letters are presented in half of Wordle words, so the best openers can be:
irate 726.51 arose 724.39 later 723.76 stare 722.58 raise 721.25 arise 721.24 alter 721.15 alert 716.36 saner 708.63 snare 707.80
Best Start Word for Wordle is
TARES. Its clues have the highest entropy. Choosing like this every time gives the answer in ≤4 guesses ~90% of the time.
How it’s ranked
These are ranked using the average expected number of possible solution words.
Caveats
There are some caveats though.
- Some of these words are only valid as guesses and could not be possible solutions.
- Optimizing for minimal solution space is optimal, there’s a possibility some of the solution spaces are easily segmented by other spaces.
- I used a computer strategy which might not completely optimal for humans because humans take a bit longer to recognize patterns and words.
Wordlebot best words
New York Times have the Wordlebot tool which has its own list of the best Wordle start words. Since they run Wordle, it’s possible they have the top 10 words to use. They have calculated the best words to start with based on Wordle’s 2,309 solutions.
Their best word to start with is Crane.
WordleBot's 10 best Wordle start words:
CRANESLATECRATESLANTTRACELANCECARTELEASTTRICEROAST
More Data
Guess Worst case Average case raise 168 61.00 arise 168 63.72 aesir 168 69.88 reais 168 71.61 serai 168 72.92 ayrie 171 78.98 aiery 171 87.03 raile 173 61.33 ariel 173 65.28 aloes 174 77.3