The best Wordle strategy - according to science 

I do this sometimes after an earlier commenter suggested it. It’s a good way to mix things up a bit!

That's a fun idea!

Imagine if the previous word was “queue”. That would make it even harder.

Lol, good idea. Mine are random, as the words are fairly random. I use the same theory with Lotto, not that it’s made me a million $.

The day after Xylyl: *guess i’ll waste my first try*

I always try to put the "S" as the final letter because so many of the words are plural.

I start with irate because it has 5 of the 6 most used letters although that may not be true if you're only looking at 5 letter words. I follow up with locus (depending on how I do with irate) to then cover 10 of the top 11 used letters (and ~40% of all letters and all vowels except sometime y (as I learned it)). locus also conveniently aligns with Wishing B's comment below about plural words being popular (and I hadn't really thought about). In general, if most of the 'top' starting words are within a % or 2 of each other, I'm not so sure that which one you pick matters all that much. And I think the whole premise of this video that entropy is the best strategy is suspect.

I just completed my second Wordle this morning and eliminated the letter “R” as a possibility in my opening guess both times.

@@davidbrandel1311love wordle. I like to start with ARISE.

@@francescaa8331 Arise is a good one. Pious is good because a lot of the words are plural so starting with an "S" at the end works in two ways. End letters are often S, N, T, L, D, G, R E, Y so words like Stray often give you a good chance.

@@wishingb5859 That's a good idea about a plural being one of the early words. I also liked the idea of jumpy as the third word, if the first two aren't giving enough clues. Some good advice on this thread. I played something like this years ago and left off but I am now playing wordle. I became an avid words with friends player in the interim...that definitely helps.

If you enter the words TUBES CHAMP FLING and WORDY for your first four words you will have played every letter except J,K,Q,V,X, and Z. That only leaves two chances but 90% of the time you will have at least four of the letters you need, and most often you will have all five.

Nice! What I do is, I put the radio on and use the first five letter word I hear in the song. 🙂

This is the way!

I know there are good starting words, but I don't think those words will help you get it on the first try which is why a start with random words.

It's not about winning but about using your mind in spontaneous ways. At least for me.

Exactly. I use the first 5 letter word I think of. I don't care if it takes me all 6 attempts to get it as it's just a bit of fun. I've even fluked it on the first guess once.

@@jemiller1000 yes

i use aeros and unity

mathematically you should guess tubes, champ, fling, and wordy first

That's pretty good. I start with arise and then bound or clout, but I like your idea of brick and jumpy. I especially like jumpy because it covers letters I don't usually think of.

Same here, I had to google to find that it's called JOTTO. I played it often with my English students at the end of a lesson. It's like a more difficult version of WORDLE with an influence of MASTER MIND.

@@PrimoStracciatella Yes Mastermind only 26 options vs 6.

Me too

I use Stare too! for the same reasons.

I avoid it. I think you've hit the nail on the head, highlighting its usefulness when you get zero letters. I think you are *more* likely to get 2-3 letters, which gets you pretty boxed in (assuming hard mode here!). I like a word where getting letters helps me with the *shape* of a word, if that makes sense.

LEAST is one of my starting guesses.

Thanks so much dude! I hope you’re right. :)

Good strategy! Personally, I might play LOUSE over MOUSE as (based on Scrabble point distribution) L is more common than M, but those differences are what makes it a horse race.

I use yeast and then houri all vowels covered and common consonants. Usually get in 3 or 4 guesses

@@mrdfw666 they are good words, although I’ve never heard of houri, I’ll have to look it up. A few days after I posted this, the Wordle actually was ‘hairy’. Did wonders for my stats!

But then you've wasted guesses, because you'll have to use at least one of those vowels again in easch of your 3rd, 4th, and 5th guesses..

@@kurtissjacobs5618 I wouldn’t say wasted. Every word has at least one vowel in it, but not necessarily in the place indicated by MOUSE and HAIRY. Take today, nothing from HAIRY and only an orange O in MOUSE. O is most common in 2nd or 3rd positions. So I start looking for pairs of consonants that go together. I can rule out TH, CH, PH, WH and SH, because there is no H. I can also rule WR, CR, TR, FR etc because there is no R. I can rule out SM, ST, SK as possible word ending as no S. I looked at the remaining consonants and saw thar FL and CK were available, and tried FLOCK and was right. It’s not perfect obviously, otherwise there would be no skill to the game! It could have been CLOCK, or there could have been a double O, such as SPOON. If I’m playing Quordle, I sometimes use PLANK as a third word if nothing looks obvious. This gives me four additional consonants and the A in a different position. With Sedecordle, I rarely need a third word. I actually find Quordle the most challenging, as provided that I remember to use American spelling, the words in Sedecordle tend to be a bit predictable. Lots of words related to war, religion and hubris. I can usually get all sixteen words in 19 attempts.

Along those lines I like to focus on consonant combinations, since there are very limited ways consonants can adjoin, and most words have at least one such pairing. l and r are the most flexible consonants. Also a, e, besides the most common vowels, also are the most flexible and pair really well with each other in words, so I want both in my first word. Which is why I've been liking "clear" a lot. Thus on my second word I either have a most likely candidate for next vowel, or can reuse a vowel for location. Either way, I'm also narrowing my search for consonant partners depending on hits and misses in the first word, but by word three, the confirmation or impossibility of the different consonant pairings often leaves me with only two likely options, or an outlier pattern like *ight or **nny.

I agree- forget the vowels. I begin with the fewest vowels possible i.e., CREST and HANDY. Look at (not in) your dictionary- your paper dictionary- and see which letters begin the most words. First is 's' and second is 'c'. My two first guesses suss out 'h' combos and words ending in 'y'. I plan my third guess to include 'l'. If I don't get many hits by then, I assume a double letter and fish for vowels. In my opinion, thinking of Wordle as a math problem only minimizes LOSING. It does not maximize WINNING (guessing the word in 4 or fewer guesses).

My opening word is LIGHT, followed by BROWN ... I've never gone beyond five moves, usually four.

I employ a strategy that plays all ten of the 1-point Scrabble tiles in my first two words, which gets all the vowels and the five most common consonants in play. This has been getting it in 3 for me around 1/3 of the time, and in 4 around another 1/3. But I am intrigued by your reverse thinking here, going consonant heavy to start, and I think I'll give that a try. It reminds me of a test I took yrs g tht shwd w cld rd wht smn ws wrtng jst fn wtht ny vwls.

Audio is a good one.

Wouldn't have helped the other day when the lone vowel was a 'Y'.

@@JMcMillen y isn't a vowel

@@EthanY3K a e i o u and sometimes y

@@mattbucello8627 I have never heard of y "sometimes" being a vowel

@@EthanY3K Then you are ignorant as to the rules of grammar surrounding the letter Y. This is easily remedied! Y is only a consonant when it is pronounced with a "hard" Y, as in "yes" or "beyond". In cases of a "short" Y (gym) or "long" Y (fly), it is a vowel. And if there are no other vowels present in the word, you can be certain Y is fulfulling that role.

I agree. My goal is to solve it, not necessarily to solve it quickly. I use one of several three-word sequences, such as SLANT>BROKE>CUPID that rule in or rule out 5 vowels and 10 higher-frequency consonants. Occasionally the first two words provide enough info to start screening a small number of possible solutions with the third word. I almost always solve in 4 or 5 which suits me just fine.

Hahahaaa

SCARE and QUOIT are mine.

@@robmontier639 QUOIT isn't a great choice over the long term. Wordle compilers know Q is always followed by U (unless you're a Scrabble freak), and often at the beginning of a 5 letter word. Q comes up relatively infrequently for that reason - they'll probably put Q in tomorrow now I've said that!

@@borderlands6606 FAQIR! Unlikely but you never know...

Thank you!

Haha, it’s a hot topic! Hmm, TOPIC might not be a bad opening guess…

I used to start with AUDIO or ADIEU to get the most vowels... but I've found I can guess vowels if I have better/more consonants. What catches me is repeated vowels or consonants.

I’m from Florida so I use REALS HUMID.

STARE is also the opening word I was using. I played for several months and never lost. Then I lost interest and stopped playing. It's interesting though that the word is ranked pretty high on the best opening word list.

@@need2know00 I still play but I stopped 'sharing' my results. Still haven't lost one as of yet.

Rates is mine. Just anagrams of reast

Stare is a good one. I also like scale, scare, slate, snare, and stale.

Stare is my opening word too.

I start with roast and child. Perhaps we knew each other in a former, tragic life.

Interesting, thanks. Just wondering where your bell curve is centered. I'm guessing 4....

@@thejoyofsoxmovie7211 If I'm reading the curve correctly in relation to the number of attempt, the peak is on Attempt 4, with 3 and 5 neck and neck, then 2 and 6 (I don't have the results in front of me, but I think 2 and 6 have 9 attempts each and were successful). This past week I scored again on my second guess, which amazed me!

@@aadamtx I start with "orate" and average 4 as well. Congrats on your 2; I'm lucky if I get one a month!

@@thejoyofsoxmovie7211 I've had the best luck with a variation using e,a,s,t, and r (tears, rates, stare all work). If that combo comes up with a goose egg, then I try words that include o and i. Strangely, P seems to be a popular letter!

@@aadamtx You might like Edgar Allan Poe's 1843(!) short story called "The Gold Bug". The hero has to solve a cipher to find a treasure, and he uses the frequency of letters in everyday speech to help him crack the code. e-t-a-o-i-n-r-s-h-d-l-u, IIRC.

I only count three vowels here.

@@healingbuddy you are right. I was mistaken.

Eyyy! That's my first word, too!

using "ROAST" i get it in two more than 1 in 10 tries...best was ROAST to CRIMP in 2.

In my 37 times playing, There has not been a word starting in I, and only one with R in the second position.

It RATES highly! :)

@@DrAndrewSteele Haha, thanks!

Tears, rates, stare, tares, and stear all work. I had no idea the latter was a word, but Wordle accepts it.

I fail to see how reast is better than roate

Yes, a disjoint pair seems like a better strategy for humans who can't work out all the hundreds or thousands of words which fit the information from the first guess. Instead, you cast the net wide. This also helps in Quordle, where you have 9 guesses to get 4 different words. I use up to 3 disjoint words, depending on whether or not I can be certain of guessing a correct word after 2 guesses or not. Also, because humans can't evaluate all possible words, it can help to give yourself some leeway to come up with good guesses for the fourth word. If you were to get rid of all the most common letters in the first 3 words, you'd have trouble making a word which is good for elimination and doesn't just repeat information you've already got. So I think this video barely scratches the surface of human strategies for Wordle.

Good thinking.

Might try that on Tuesday..

(But a slight problem with being left with a "definite U if no [vowels] are colored" are words like CRYPT, GLYPH, GYPSY, LYMPH, LYNCH, PSYCH, TRYST and etc. Granted, 5-letter words with Y as the vowel are in limited supply, but NYMPH has been played... :)

A really solid opening pair probably more helpful! But coming up with a good second word based on the results from the first part of the fun… :)

oh and they take out every letter exept v + x

I’d seen that online too, so I checked in the OED, and the first definition is an old spelling of soar, so I went with that. The young hawk one is fifth on the list. :)

@@DrAndrewSteele Way to choose an authoritative source, sir.

No fun!

story would be better with the r, n and r are better in their own way, but r goes better for me

I have used exactly the same words! Adieu and then story.

I’ve been using “adieu & stylo”.. but I’m gonna switch to story 👍👍👍

@@shawdowyhooman6880 R is better

Funny, because my first choice is "adieu" which is, obviously, French! Not sure why the game allows certain foreign words but not others.

Arise works well for me

@@tigergreg8 I think raise

@@locomotivetrainstation6053 You know they are the same letters. LOL 😄

@@tigergreg8 in better positions

i’m going to try that. i’ve used raise and touch for so long. i like it because it eliminates all the vowels not needed many many times i get 4 out of 5 letters using those 2 words and can guess in 3 tries, at the most 4. 😊

I too tried it and I got the word in third try

I did the same thing with entropy, but also incorporated word frequency data from google, so both entropy and commonality were considered. I found that RATES was the best opener

Oh, you will! My husband and I have been playing it daily since March. Always get it but how many tries varies!! That makes it fun.

I thought I read where the daily word is never a plural s. (?) I’m a Newbie. The instructions in the NYT leave out a lot.

@@maryalicesmith2626 That could be. The unlimited Wordle is often plural. But I do both.

I have a similar strategy at times. but I like to try to collect the y as well. ie "ROUGE" and "AMITY", but to be honest I'm using these for quordle. but if you don't mind I'm gonna try "HOUSE" and "PAINT"

question is - is it working for *you* - I think any strategy/combo that works for you is good. mine are stare, onium, glyph - and if I'm stuck usually decaf (don't like reusing a & e - but all that's left is really k - oh & I suppose w (qjzxv)

@@juliaconnell yes, mine work great for me. 9 times outta 10 I get the word in 4. Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out what the word is through elimination and experimentation. The really hard ones are words with double letters.

@@mykaladams1135 that's awesome Mykal - glad you've got a system that works for you. 😃👍 yip, same, mostly I get it by 4, sometimes 3, sometimes 5 - only failed once (one of those annoying - all green for most except the first letter - something like watch, batch, catch, latch, match, hatch etc) 🙄

Very cool! How did you do it?! And have you thought about writing a blog post about it or something? I’d be really interested to see how it works!

​@@DrAndrewSteele I made a short video on my channel, but essentially, it predicts how many words will be eliminated by each character if they turn green, yellow or gray. I multiplied that number of characters by the probability of a character actually turning green, yellow or gray. I love your way of approaching the problem though, and I think it has much more potential.

@@rhythm7335 Oh cool! That’s not a bad solution, well done. :) There are so many different approaches to solving Wordle and it’s quite interesting that they all converge on similar-ish levels of performance!

@@DrAndrewSteele I'm honestly loving the wordle solving trend. I wonder if theres a way to find a perfect algorithm, and prove it's perfect

@@rhythm7335 I actually found one the other day, annoyingly after making this video! A mathematician did an exhaustive tree search, but I’m not quite sure how he proved it because it’s a bit complicated: sonorouschocolate.com/notes/index.php?title=The_best_strategies_for_Wordle

Just did this. My word has 3 vowels-

AxxOx ( yellow letter: U)

Or NORTH

adieu then sport to start for me, unless adieu has a bunch of hits

Exactly right. The best opener is nothing if you don’t have the best follow up.

How about salet and pious?

I do share and mount

I have had good success with salet, incur and phony as my first 3 guesses.

STORY > MONTH

Best strategy ever. 😎

I find ADIEU and AUDIO to be wastes of a guess since I don't need to guess all vowels to know which vowels are present. Eliminating 3 vowels OR identifying 1-2 vowels essentially achieves the same outcome.

So you literally NEVER get the word in two tries??? That's pathetic.

@@gregd6706 I have not been playing Wordle that long but I've solved the puzzle on the second try three times so far.

Thanks, appreciate the comment! :)

I usually use “cloud” for my second word; the first guess is “stare”.

Coincidence! His video came out while I was editing this one. :) And thanks! Interesting that our (slightly) difference approaches came up with different answers…

@@DrAndrewSteele Turns out there was a bug in his code, that lead to a wrong conclusion. In a follow up, he came to the conclusion of soare, before dismissing it for the same reasons you outline here, and finally to salet, which wins _just barely_, with trace and crate tied for second.

@@noseman123 I saw that too! How funny. It’s finicky enough that I thought we’d reached different answers because he was doing a frequency-weighted analysis versus me using the actual answer list. :)

hot topic