What’s the best word to start with when playing Wordle?

Virgin Radio

27 Jan 2022, 10:26

Credit: Getty

Credit: Getty

You play Wordle, don’t you? Of course you do. At first, you didn’t have a clue what those strange sequences of coloured squares were that kept appearing on social media. Then, once you’d discovered what it was, you thought it’d be fun to have a go. Little did you know, however, just how addictive the word game would become!

By now, you’re probably mildly obsessed with Wordle, and likely have your own strategy to take on the simplistic but oh-so-engaging game every day. But have you chosen the best word to start with?

In case you are one of the few people that doesn’t know what Wordle is, it’s a free online guessing game in which a player tries to work out a five-letter word in six tries or fewer. After each guess, the letters go a certain colour, to indicate a player’s progress. If the letter that you guess isn’t in the target word, that letter will turn grey. If it is in the target word but in the wrong place, it will turn yellow. If it’s in the word and in the right place, it will go green.

With only six attempts to find the day’s word, it makes sense to choose a good starting word. It’s a good idea to pick a word with as many vowels as possible, as it seems certain that there will be at least one of them in the correct answer. 

Therefore, a word that many people choose to start with is the vowel-heavy “adieu”. Starting with it will give you a good chance of, at the very least, getting one or two letters turning yellow.

After finding the vowels that are in the target word, the next step is to focus on the common consonants. Depending on the results from the first line, it’s a good idea to try and find a word that incorporates T, S, and R on the second line, and if you can squeeze the vowel O somewhere in there as well, then all the better. Chucking an N in early doors isn’t a bad idea either. 

You can always, of course, mix the most common consonants and vowels with your first guess. For instance, you can try starting with, “atone”, “irate”, “stain”, “arise”.

Once you’ve found which of the most popularly-used letters are and aren’t in the word, you can start to figure out its shape and, hopefully, fill in the gaps to get the answer by your sixth guess. 

And don’t forget, letters can appear twice, so even if a letter has gone green, it doesn’t mean it won’t be elsewhere in the word. Remember to bear that in mind while you are driving yourself mad trying to work out the answer.

Good luck!

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