“Have you played the Wordle today?”
I ask my friends and family members this question daily.
While I’m not typically competitive when it comes to sports or classes, this word puzzle brings out my competitive side. Nothing starts my day off right quite like getting the word in fewer tries than my brother. Because of this, I am always on the hunt for new Wordle strategies.
I have consulted some experts who love the game as much as I do, and between their testimonies and my experience, I hope to provide some tips and tricks for those who want to guess the word of the day in fewer tries.
The rules of the game are simple. Wordle players attempt to guess the five-letter word of the day in six tries. If a tile turns yellow, the player has found a letter in the word. If a tile turns green, the player has found a letter in the word and the letter’s placement.
Since the game’s goal is to guess the word in as few tries as possible, the first guess is crucial. People debate which starting word provides the most hints.
In The New York Times article “Seven Things We Learned Analyzing 515 Million Wordles,” Josh Katz and Aatish Bhatia list the most common starting words.
They identify the most popular starting word as “adieu” because many people like to figure out which vowels to use first. I did not find this statistic surprising because I know people who start with “adieu,” and I have even tried this strategy myself.
However, I never have much luck with “adieu,” struggling without any consonant hints and usually getting the word in four or five tries. When I use “tears,” I know if the word has any common vowels and consonants, and I have a greater chance of guessing the word in two or three attempts.
The article confirmed my suspicions about “adieu.” Katz and Bhatia write, “Of the 30 top starting words, ‘adieu’ is the most popular but least efficient.”
They even explained, “On average, players who started with ‘adieu’ needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with ‘slate,’ adding up to 132 extra turns over the course of a year.”
According to this data, players might want to bid that starting word adieu.
Matthew Little is an associate professor of English at Mississippi State University. Little has played Wordle regularly for almost three years and he agrees that “adieu” seems to be an ineffective starting word.
Little became interested in code-breaking when he was a kid and memorized the ten most common letters in the English language. Using this knowledge, he formed his own Wordle strategy.
“These days I start with ‘oaten.’ I used to use ‘atone,’ which has the same letters, but one day that was the word,” Little said. “‘Oaten’ and ‘atone’ both have the five most commonly occurring letters in English.”
Little’s strategy makes a lot of sense, but players ultimately have to decide which starting word works the best for them. I still use “tears” even though the Wordle rarely ends in a “s” because I like the placement of the other letters.
Self-proclaimed Wordle-connoisseur Kelsey Dembo, a junior from Ocean Springs majoring in electrical engineering, told me about her strategy.
“I always start with the word “audio” to give me a great deal of vowels to work with,” Dembo said. “Knowing which vowels are in the word and which vowels are not in the word makes it easier to guess.”
Like Dembo, Simmons Penn, a chemical engineering major from Hattiesburg, loves Wordle. Rather than mulling over five-letter words trying to find the most vowel-filled choice, Penn drew her go-to first word from an unlikely source.
“I use the word ‘pinot’ because it is the name of my cat,” Penn said. “I usually will get the Wordle in three or four tries using this word.”
Once making the first guess, players can turn to other strategies to improve their game.
Little recommends keeping the common letters in mind throughout the game. He does not use uncommon letters like “u” or “y” until other letters do not work. He also has a specific second guess if he does not get any hints with “oaten” – “shirk.”
“‘K’ does not have a high percentage,” Little said, “but the other letters in ‘shirk’ do.”
I also recommend always using your hints. Some people choose to guess a word that does not align with the hints they already have to get more information, but I do not like to throw away my chance of getting the word on my next guess. I essentially play the game in hard mode, which forces players to use all their hints.
Last, for those serious about improving Wordle scores, The New York Times has a resource called WordleBot that analyzes your guesses. The WordleBot assigns your guesses a score from 0 to 99 and identifies tries where you could have made better choices.
I did not know WordleBot existed because I play the free version, and only Times Games subscribers have access to WordleBot. Call me old school, but I think you can figure some of that out for yourself. I enjoy puzzling over the game on my own.
Whether you have played the game for years or plan to guess the Wordle for the first time today, ponder some new strategies to sharpen your Wordle skills.
