The best Wordle starting words, and why they work

Every Wordle game starts the same way: a blank grid and a guess made with no clues at all. That first word is the only one you can plan before the game begins, so it is worth getting right. A good opener finds as many letters of the answer as possible and splits the list of possible answers into small groups, so the second guess has less to do.

We tested every word Wordle accepts as a guess (12,694 words) against the original answer list of 2,315 words. For each one we worked out how many letters it finds on average, how many it turns green, and how many possible answers are left after you see its colours. This guide walks through what we found and turns it into a simple plan.

How we measured an opener

We used three measures, because each one tells you something different:

• Average hits: how many of the guess's letters turn green or yellow, on average, across all 2,315 answers. A higher number means you learn more letters.
• Average greens: how many letters land in exactly the right spot. Greens are worth more than yellows, because they fix a square for good.
• Answers left: after you see the colours, how many answers could still be right, on average. This is the best single test of an opener, because it rewards guesses that split the list evenly.

The first two only use letter counts. The third plays every opener against every answer, works out the exact colour pattern Wordle would show, and groups the answers by pattern. An opener that leaves 60 answers on average is roughly twice as useful as one that leaves 120.

Which letters show up most

Letter frequency in Wordle answers is not the same as in ordinary English text. The answer list was picked by hand to use familiar words and leaves out most plurals, so S is far less common than you might expect, and E, A and R lead the way.

E appears in 46% of answers, A in 39% and R in 36%. O, T, L and I come next, each in more than a quarter of answers. At the other end, the rare letters are very rare: J appears in only 27, Q appears in only 29, X appears in only 37, Z appears in only 35 answers. Putting one of those in your first guess almost always wastes a square.

Vowels matter, but not as much as people think. Almost every answer has one or two vowels, and E and A between them cover most answers. After that, a common consonant like R, T, L, S or N tells you more than a third vowel would.

Where letters sit in the word

Knowing that a letter is common is half the story. Knowing where it usually sits tells you how to place it, so it has the best chance of turning green.

S is the most common first letter (366 answers start with S), followed by C, B, T. The last letter is even more lopsided: E ends 424 answers and Y ends 364. Only 36 answers end in S, which is why plural-looking guesses so often waste the last square.

The middle positions favour vowels. A is the most common second letter and the third spot is shared between A, I, O and E, so an opener with a vowel in the second or third square has a good chance of a green there.

The openers that find the most letters

If you only care about how many letters you find, these ten answers-list words lead. Each uses five different letters, all of them common.

The top of this list is crowded: the best words all use the same letters (A, E, R, T, L, S, I, O) in different orders. That is why the order of letters matters so much, and why the greens column is a useful tie-breaker. If you want the most greens, SLATE, SAUCE, SLICE lead the list, with 0.62 greens on average for SLATE.

The openers that cut the list the most

Finding letters is good. Splitting the answer list into small groups is better, because that is what really decides how many guesses you need. This table ranks every accepted guess by how many answers are left, on average, after you see its colours.

ROATE comes out on top, leaving 60.4 answers on average out of 2,315. Several of the leaders are accepted guesses that can never be the answer, which is fine for a first guess: you are gathering information, not trying to win in one. If you would rather open with a word that could win, RAISE, ARISE, IRATE are the best answer-list openers, with RAISE leaving 61.0.

The "colour patterns" column counts how many different results an opener can show. More patterns usually means smaller groups, but not always: what matters is that no single pattern holds a huge share of the answers.

What your first guess usually shows

An average tells you how good an opener is over many games, but it helps to see what a single game looks like. This chart shows how many of RAISE's five letters turn up in the answer, across every possible answer.

Most of the time a good opener finds one or two letters, and finding three or more is a lucky start. Only 168 answers turn RAISE completely grey. Even then you have learned something useful: five common letters are out, so the answer must be built from the rest.

The size of the biggest group matters too. After RAISE, the largest group of answers that share one colour pattern has 168 words. After CRANE it has 263, and 263 answers turn CRANE completely grey. A smaller worst case means fewer games where the second guess has to start almost from scratch.

Information, not luck

It is tempting to judge an opener by the days it scores a green straight away, but that is mostly luck. What a first guess really does is sort the answers into groups. Each colour pattern you could see is a group, and the answer is in exactly one of them. A good opener makes lots of small groups, so whichever one you land in, there are few answers left to choose from.

That is why a word like ROATE can beat a word that finds more letters on average. It mixes common letters with positions that split the list evenly, so no single pattern holds a large share of the answers. You can see the same idea in the second guess: the best follow-up is the word that splits the answers still left, which is not always a word that could be the answer.

Popular openers, side by side

Most players have a favourite. Here is how the well-known ones compare on all three measures.

RAISE, ARISE and STARE are excellent. CRANE and SLATE are strong too, a little behind on answers left but with more greens. Vowel-heavy openers like ADIEU and AUDIO find vowels, but they leave far more answers (124 and 184), because vowels alone rarely tell answers apart. Consonants like R, T, S and L do that work.

A strong second guess

Many players use a fixed second word when the first one finds little. The best partner shares no letters with the opener, so together they test ten different common letters.

Two guesses like these find around 3.0 letters on average, which is usually enough to work out the answer on the third or fourth guess. Use a fixed second word only when the first guess comes back mostly grey. If it found two or three letters, a guess that uses them will cut the list faster.

Double letters and other traps

749 answers, 32% of the list, repeat a letter, like ABACK, ABASE, ABATE. These are the games that run to five or six guesses, because players rarely guess a repeated letter until they are stuck. If you have found four letters and nothing fits, try doubling one of them.

Common endings are worth knowing too. The most frequent last two letters are -ER (141), -CH (58), -LY (56), -SE (52), -AL (50), -CK (47). When the end of the word is still open, testing E and R, or Y, early often pays off.

Common mistakes with openers

• Changing your opener every day. Each word has its own strengths. Sticking with one helps you learn what its colours usually mean, which speeds up your second guess.
• Using a rare letter early. J, Q, X and Z appear in only a few dozen answers each. A first guess that spends a square on one of them is usually wasted.
• Guessing a plural. The answer list mostly avoids simple plurals, so a guess ending in S rarely helps you with the last square.
• Repeating a letter in the opener. A double letter in your first guess tests four letters instead of five, which leaves more answers behind.
• Ignoring yellows on the second guess. A yellow tells you the letter is in the word and also where it is not. Move it to a new square so it can turn green.

Why the answer list is different

Wordle has two word lists. The answer list holds the 2,315 words that can be the solution, chosen to be familiar words that most players know. The guess list is much longer and accepts rare and odd words, but none of those can be the answer. The New York Times has edited the answer list since it took over the game, but most of the original answers remain, and the patterns in this guide hold either way.

The split explains why some well-known openers look worse than they feel. A word can be a great guess even if it could never be the answer, because its only job is to give you information. Equally, a perfectly ordinary answer word can be a poor opener if its letters are too rare or too similar.

A simple plan for every game

1. Open with RAISE, RAISE, STARE or CRANE. Pick one and stick with it, so you learn how it behaves.
2. If the first guess finds one letter or none, play a fixed partner with five new letters.
3. Once you have two or three letters, place them where they are most likely to sit: vowels in the middle, E and Y at the end.
4. If four letters are known and nothing fits, try a repeated letter or a less common consonant.
5. Stuck? The Wordle solver shows exactly which answers still fit your colours.