The Best Wordle Starting Words, Tested on 1,981 Common Words
The best Wordle starting word in our test was RAISE. After guessing it, the number of words that still fit the clues averaged about 50, the lowest of every word we tried. ARISE, AROSE, LATER and STARE were close behind. The popular vowel-heavy openers did badly: ADIEU left about 101 possible answers on average and AUDIO about 148.
Key facts
- RAISE left an average of 50 possible answers after one guess, the best result in our test.
- ARISE (53), AROSE (54), LATER (57) and STARE (58) were close behind.
- ADIEU (101) and AUDIO (148) left two to three times as many answers.
- Vowels are useful, but common consonants like R, S, T and L split the answer list better.
How we tested the starting words
Wordle answers are everyday words, so we built a stand-in answer list: every five-letter word in our 168,352-word dictionary that is common in everyday English and is not a simple plural. That gave 1,981 words, a similar size to the real answer pool of a little over 2,000 words.
For each starting word, we played it against all 1,981 possible answers and recorded the coloured pattern it would produce (green, yellow or grey for each letter). Words that produce the same pattern can’t be told apart yet, so the average size of those groups tells you how many answers you would still have to choose from. A smaller number means a more informative first guess.
The results
| Starting word | Possible answers left (average) |
|---|---|
| RAISE | 50.3 |
| ARISE | 53.3 |
| AROSE | 54.4 |
| LATER | 56.6 |
| STARE | 58.2 |
| SNARE | 58.4 |
| CRATE | 59.2 |
| TRACE | 59.7 |
| CRANE | 63.4 |
| SLATE | 63.7 |
| ADIEU | 101.2 |
| AUDIO | 147.6 |
All of the top words share the same idea: they use five different letters taken from the most frequent letters in five-letter words, which are E, A, R, O, T, I, S and L. You can see the full frequency table in our article on Wordle letter frequency by position.
Why ADIEU and AUDIO are weaker than they look
Starting with lots of vowels feels sensible, because almost every word has at least one. But in our answer list, E appears in 49% of words and A in 40%, while U appears in only 17%. Using a whole guess on U, I and O tells you less than testing R, S and T, which each appear in more than a quarter of answers.
There is a second problem: AUDIO and ADIEU almost never produce green letters, because their vowels are in unusual positions. In our test, AUDIO averaged 0.27 green letters per game, while SLATE averaged 0.59.
Greens versus yellows
If you prefer to judge a starting word by how many coloured tiles it gives you, here is what we found. SHARE and SLATE produced the most green tiles on average (0.60 and 0.59), while IRATE and AROSE produced the most yellows (1.35 and 1.31). RAISE scored well on both, with 0.55 greens and 1.26 yellows, which is why it narrows the list so well.
Our advice
- Pick one of RAISE, ARISE, STARE or LATER and use it every day, so you learn its patterns.
- For your second guess, use five new letters that are still possible. Our Wordle helper suggests a next guess that tests the letters that split the remaining answers best.
- If you play hard mode, a word like CRATE or TRACE gives you more green tiles to build on.
The exact best word depends on the answer list you assume, so other analyses sometimes crown SALET, CRANE or SLATE. The differences between the top ten words are small. The difference between those and ADIEU is not.
