Science Has Figured Out The Best Wordle Starting Words

Several of the biggest brains in the scientific and mathematical communities have been working hard to come up with an algorithm to help you land your Wordle games without turning to Google or other search engines to crack your next puzzle.

By Britta DeVore | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

wordle

Hoping to nail your next Wordle game from the jump? You may be in luck. Several of the biggest brains in the scientific and mathematical communities have been working hard to come up with an algorithm to help you land your Wordle games without turning to Google or other search engines to crack your next puzzle. After gathering the facts from a multitude of hypotheses, these smarties are here to help you win your next game. 

To unravel the latest word, several ideas were put forth to help you reach victory without making so many guesses. Programmer and avid gaming enthusiast, Tyler Glaiel, stepped forward to offer his insight on what players should guess first. Of all the words Glaiel plugged into his first round of Wordle, he found that the words soare, roate, and raise were the best in helping you land the final word the fastest. Along with giving you a great start, these words will also help you earn a higher score with more green tiles than yellow, which are worth two points and one point, respectively. 

Meanwhile, another follower of the scientific process, Mahmood Hikmet, has uncovered a tool as well as a list of words that have come out to a 99.3% success rate when trying out your first prediction in Wordle. The idea behind Hikmet’s technique is that words will be based on the most seen letters in each puzzle. Included in the long list of Hikmet’s starters are slate, sauce, slice, crane, and suite. 

wordle starting words

The list of scientific minds continues to go on as gamers everywhere are putting their two cents in to help fellow participants earn a high score and win at the daily word. Overall, when put together, each plan to crack Wordle has similar solution practices. The most common tip is for users to stack up on vowels. Not only are more vowels featured in many of the words, but by using them up, it will also help you narrow down the list faster. The second discovery shows that gamers should always change it up for the second word even if it appears completely different than the first guess. Switch up your letters and uncover more options. 

The final tip to conquer your next Wordle challenge is to keep it simple. Like another scientific belief, Occam’s razor puts forth, the easiest solution is (most typically) the right one. Stick to language you would use in daily conversations with friends and you’re most likely closer to uncovering the word of the day.

For those that haven’t played the newest addictive challenge that is blowing Words with Friends and Sudoku out of the water, Wordle is a daily word puzzle in which gamers attempt to sort out the hidden word in a block of letters. Players get six tries to decode the five letter word with daily changes that are the same for all of those who take on the game. As you miss your guesses, the tiles change revealing how close you came to the correct word. 

Josh Wardle, who created Wordle, says that he came up with the guessing game for his partner who is obsessed with similar types of games. At first, the two would just play with each other before the Brooklyn-based software engineer put his skills to the test and created an online version of the daily challenge. The game took off and soon became a favorite to all word puzzle lovers.