Best Wordle start words to help you keep your streak

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The best Wordle start words are a huge part of beating the game and avoiding the need to search for today's Wordle hint .

Without a good start word, your streak is at risk — and nobody wants to lose all that hard Wordle work. In fact, it's possible to lose your Wordle streak without losing or missing a game , which is pretty frustrating.

Plus, even if you're a bit of a Wordle expert by now, having a great start word will help you turn 4/6s into 3/6s (possibly even 2/6s). Even the NYT's brilliant WordleBot tool — sadly now behind a paywall — recognizes the importance of a good start word.

I've written before about how I've played every Wordle so far and lost only once , and No. 1 on my list of tips is to use a good starting word. So that's what I'll discuss here. Read on and I'll explain what the best Wordle start words are, the math behind them and what alternatives to try.

Most common letters

• Research from Oxford English Dictionary editors revealed the most common letters to be E (11.2%), A (8.5%), R (7.6%), I (7.5%) and O (7.2%).

• Google's research, meanwhile, finds E (12.5%), T (9.3%), A (8%), O (7.6%) and I (7.6%) to be the top five.

• We reviewed all of the Wordle solutions and found the five most common letters in eligible words to be E (53.3%), A (42.2%), R (38.8%), O (32.6%) and T (31.6%).

Before we dive into the list of the words, let's break down the science behind it.

You don't have to be a genius to realize that it's a good idea to use letters that occur more frequently in English. For example, you're more likely to find an "A" in the word than a "Z."

So what are the most common letters? There's no fixed answer to that, as it depends how you measure.

Readers Digest recently published the ten most common letters in the English language. Based on Oxford English Dictionary editors' research analyzing 240,000 entries in the book, the five most common letters were found to be E (11.2%), A (8.5%), R (7.6%), I (7.5%) and O (7.2%).

But if you take another approach, you come up with a different answer. In a research paper on English Letter Frequency Counts , Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, analyzed the data from Google Books to put together a list of most commonly used letters in the English language. His findings concluded that E (12.5%), T (9.3%), A (8%), O (7.6%) and I (7.6%) were the top five, while K (0.5%), X (0.2%), J (0.2%), Q (0.1%) and Z (0.1%) were the least common.

However, that list is based on words in general, rather than Wordle answers — so to really find out which letters feature most frequently in the game, you'd need to analyze them all.

Fortunately, that's easy to do. Because Wordle's answers are all freely available in the website's HTML code, it's pretty simple to download them, then do a bit of number crunching. This is the list of most frequently used letters that you get when you do that:

NYT Connections

If you love playing other games from the Times, be sure to check out our NYT Connections hints and answers guide for help with each day's puzzle.

• E (53.3%

• A (42.2%)

• R (38.8%)

• O (32.6%)

• T (31.6%)

• L (31%)

• I (29%)

• S (28.9%)

• N (24.8%)

• C (20.6%)

Note that the list above is based on correct Wordle answers, rather than Wordle words; the game accepts some 15,000-plus words as guesses, but only 2,309 are valid solutions.

That's interesting, then, but it's just the appetizer for the best Wordle start word main course to follow…

Best Wordle start words

• SOARE, ROATE and RAISE are the best starting words, based on an analysis of Wordle's 12,972 possible guesses

Several people have attempted to use math to determine the best Wordle start words.

One of them was programmer and game designer Tyler Glaiel , who assigned each letter in Wordle's 12,972 possible guesses a score of 0, 1 or 2, based on whether it is included in one of the 2,309 answers or not, and whether it is in the right place.

After checking all 12,972 words, the algorithm determined that the best starting options are:

• SOARE

• ROATE

• RAISE

Glaiel concludes that ROATEis the best Wordle start word if you want to rule out possible answers as quickly as possible.

However, because ROATE doesn't actually feature in Wordle's possible answers list itself, you'll never get a 1/6 with it. For that reason, Glaiel recommends starting with RAISE.That was the right answer in Wordle #1,035, on Friday, 19 April 2024 (but it might turn up again. In February, 2026, the New York Times announced that it was "adding previously run words back into play").

Programmer Bertrand Fan took a similar approach and unsurprisingly came up with a very similar list:

• SOARE

• SAREE

• SEARE

• STARE

• ROATE

Given that the top three don't feature in Wordle's possible answers list, that would make STAREthe statistically best Wordle start word, based on Fan's analysis at least.

Coincidentally, Stare is the word independently picked by some of the Tom's Guide team years ago, without having seen that research, so that's the one we'd go for.

That decision was instead based on common sense; after all, S is the most common first letter among Wordle answers, A is the most common third letter and E the most common fifth letter. T and R, meanwhile, are the two most common consonants overall in the game.

Though, a pair of MIT researchers have their own pick, based on an algorithm picking the right answer in the fewest moves possible. SALET(a light medieval helmet) was the winner. That also gives you five of the top 10 letters, but we're not as keen on it as STARE— as R is the third-most-used letter, and L is the sixth-most-used. A good alternate for sure.

So there you have it — for the Tom's Guide team at least, the best Wordle start word is STARE.

Well, all but one.

If you're a regular reader of our piece highlighting today's Wordle answer , you'll know that our Wordler-in-Residence, Alan Martin, favors a completely different word: ORATE.

His rationale is that it contains all five of the most common letters from our analysis. It's pretty successful, though it's worth noting that just 41 Wordle answers start with 'O', limiting its 'hole-in-one' potential.

The best Wordle start word according to WordleBot

• The New York Times' WordleBot tool also analyses what could make a good Wordle solution

• WordleBot's top starting word is TRACE, or TROPE in hard mode.

The NYT's excellent WordleBot tool has its own list of the best Wordle start words — and it should know, given it's made by the people who now run Wordle.

However, changes to how the Bot works have shifted its recommendations over the years. Originally CRANE was its pick, but in August 2022, the Bot was altered so as not to know the game's permitted solutions. Instead, it was given a list of "roughly 3,150 relatively common English words", each with a probability of being the answer based on solutions to date and frequency in articles from the New York Times archives.

This changed the recommendation to SLATE, or LEAST if playing in hard mode.

But that changed again in January 2024 , when the NYT made some changes to WordleBot's dictionary. There are now around 4,500 "relatively common words", and that shifted the Bot's favorite starting word to TRACE, or TROPE in hard mode.

It seems to have changed again since then, but without any explanatory commentary from the NYT. At the time of writing, these are the Bot's top picks:

• SLATE (99)

• CRANE (99)

• TRACE (99)

• CARTE (98)

• SLANT (98)

• CRATE (98)

• PRATE (98)

• PLATE (98)

• CARET (98)

• STALE (97)

Should your Wordle start word have lots of vowels?

• Almost every Wordle answer has a vowel, so choose a starting word with A, E, I, O or U is a good bet

• Avoid ADIEU as it's not a Wordle solution, but consider AUDIO or CANOE

Some people swear by playing the likes of ADIEU, AUDIO, ABOUT, CANOE or OUIJA, as they let you use up three or four vowels at the start.

This can be a good alternative approach, as (almost) every Wordle answer has at least one vowel so it makes sense to identify it as soon as possible.

But I wouldn't personally go down that route. ADIEU is not a Wordle answer, so you'll never get a 1/6 with that. AUDIO is decent, but it doesn't contain an E — which is not just the most common vowel but also the most common letter in the game. Ditto ABOUT.

CANOE isn't bad, but C and N are nowhere near as common as S, T or R when it comes to consonants, so what you gain in one aspect you lose in the other. And OUIJA is just a silly suggestion: it doesn't have an E but it does have a J, which is the second least likely letter to feature in the game at all.

However, vowels are very important in the game in general, so consider them strongly when thinking of a second word. Speaking of which…

Best Wordle second words

• On the second move, prioritize the next most common characters and missing vowels, if possible

• If your starting word fails, choose another from the list that doesn't include the same letters

Assuming you've got one or two green or yellow letters from your first move, it makes sense to prioritize the common letters you didn't try on the first go.

As mentioned earlier, our resident Wordler, Alan Martin, uses ORATE as his starting word, because it hits all five of the top letters. That means he always prioritizes playing 'L', 'I', 'S', 'N' and 'C' on his next turn. If you go with STARE like the rest of the Tom's Guide team, you'd want to try and include 'O', 'L', 'I', 'N' and 'C'.

Here's a recent example of how that applies in practice:

ORATE produced a single yellow 'T'. Knowing he wanted to try as many of 'L', 'I', 'S', 'N' and 'C' as possible, Alan opted for TUNIC. This included three of them from the list while moving 'T' around. It also tried both remaining vowels, given the first guess didn't reveal any.

Four letters went green, ensuring that grabbing the three-turn win was pretty straightforward, despite the presence of a tricky double letter.

Of course sometimes even a great start word won't earn you any yellow or green results. If that happens, you'll need a good second word.

Which you choose will obviously depend on what your first word was, as you won't want to repeat any letters you've already used. For Alan, the go-to in this situation is MUSIC, because of the common letters, but also the need to try the other two vowels.

If you're using STARE as your Wordle start word, alternative options include PHONY, COULD or DOING.

PHONY is a statistically better option as a second word, because Y is one of the most frequent fifth letters. However, COULD and DOING both use two vowels, and playing your vowels early is always a good strategy, as described above.

Of course, starting words can only take you so far. There's a lot more you can learning about Wordle simply by using math, and I've done just that. In fact, I analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns — here's what I found .

I've also put together a list of the best Wordle alternatives in case the original game proves either too easy or too difficult for your taste. And if you ever need a Wordle hint , just be sure to bookmark our page for your daily dose.

Read next: Your Wordle streak is about to get a multi-device boost — here's how to get it set up

More from Tom's Guide

• Today's Wordle hint

• I analyzed every Wordle answer to look for patterns

• What is Wordle and how to play — everything you need to know