Best Wordle Starting Words - How to Choose Your First Guess

Wordle by the New York Times may appear to be a simple word-guessing game, but choosing the right words demands some strategy. You can also make random guesses and eventually find the answer word in the 5th or 6th try, but if you consider using the best starting word, it would take fewer tries to find today’s Wordle answer.

If you already have a starting five-letter word that you use on a daily basis, that’s fine. But if you don’t have one and want to make your first opening word, then this blog is for you. Here, we will guide you on how you can pick the best Wordle starting word that could lead you towards the answer and help you not waste your guesses.

Importance of the Starting Word in Wordle

Your first Wordle guess is important because it gives you the first set of clues about the answer. Instead of trying to guess the correct word immediately, the opening word in Wordle tests several common letters and finds out which ones belong to the answer and which ones don’t.

With a well-chosen starting word, you’d be able to identify vowels and analyze the possible letter pattern of the answer. For instance, using a word with common consonants (S, R, N, C, D) and vowels (A, E, I, O, U) gives you more information than choosing a word with uncommon letters that are less likely to appear.

Simply put, your goal shouldn’t be to find the answer on your first attempt but to collect useful Wordle hints that can lead you towards the word of the day.

How You Can Pick the Best Wordle Starting Words

1. Use Common Consonants

English has 26 letters, including 21 consonants and 5 vowels. With so many consonants to choose from, finding the right ones for your first Wordle guess can be difficult. 

So, you should focus on using the common consonants that appear frequently in five-letter English words. For instance, S, T, R, N, L, C, D, M, and P are used to make most of the words. 

You should use these consonants to create your Wordle starting word. Some examples include:

• CRATE

• DRONE

• LITER

• MAKER

• MOIST

• PRIDE

• PLANT

• SLATE

• SMEAR

• TRACE

These words are mixed with vowels and consonants, which could become your best starting guesses for the next Wordle.

2. Don’t Forget About Vowels

Along with consonants, you shouldn’t forget about including vowels in your starting guess for Wordle. Previous Wordle answers also show that vowels appear frequently, with two-vowel answers making up the largest share of the answer list.

The graph below shows how frequently different numbers of vowels have appeared in previous Wordle answers.

With this, you can get the idea of how important it is to use vowels in forming your first guess for Wordle. 

3. Take Help from r/Wordle on Reddit

On Reddit, there’s an entire community with thousands of members who share their real opinions about every day's Wordle. You can join it by navigating to this link (Join r/wordle).

In this community, users also share what type of starting words they use to find the answer to the daily puzzle. This can give you new ideas and help you build a list of five-letter words that you can use as your starting guesses.

4. Put Letters in Wordle Solver to Get Useful Suggestions

You can also use an online Wordle Solver to make unique and powerful starting words. For that, you simply need to input your certain letters into the free Wordle guesser, and it will give you countless different suggestions.

To be more precise with your starting word, you should provide multiple letters, and it will give you valid five-letter word suggestions.

In Wordle Solver by NYT Solvers, you get three different input areas: green (for exact position), yellow (for random position), and grey (for not using the letters).

Enter the letters you already know into the fields, and the tool will filter its suggestions to match, so you can find a valid Wordle starting word without racking your brain.

5. Avoid Picking the Word from Previous Answers

There’s a rule in Wordle that the previous answers can’t be repeated as the “answer of the day” in the next puzzles. This means you can use them as a guess word, but they won’t be the word of the day.

So, what you can do is find a five-letter Wordle word that isn’t used as an ‘answer word’ in previous puzzles. To get help from this, you can use any available Wordle answer archive and see which word has been used in earlier puzzles.

Common Mistakes to Avoid When Picking the Best Starting Word for Wordle

Before ending the blog, here are some useful tips that you must keep in mind to create your best starting word for Wordle.

1. Don’t repeat letters that have already been confirmed as absent. If a letter turns grey, using it again in your next guess usually gives you little or no new information.

2. Don’t just stick to creating a word with five different letters. Also use double/repeated letters, as several previous Wordle answers have included letters that appear more than once.

3. Don’t ignore vowels (A, E, I, O, U) even if you think they are very common because most of the answers contain one or more vowels in them.

4. Never use a single starting word every time. Keep multiple options and use them as your initial guess to increase your chances of finding useful clues.

Conclusion

Choosing the best Wordle starting word can make your game easier and help you find the answer in fewer tries. Instead of making random guesses, focus on using common consonants, useful vowels, and different letter combinations to get more clues from your first attempt. 

You can also take ideas from previous answers, Reddit discussions, and Wordle solvers to improve your strategy. However, don’t follow one method every time. Try different starting words, learn from your guesses, and use the clues carefully to reach today’s Wordle answer.