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The best Wordle start word, and why the answer keeps changing

CRANE, SLATE and SALET all get called the best start word. They are all defensible, and the reason they disagree is more useful than the answer.

3 min read

Ask five people for the best Wordle start word and you will get five answers, all of them defensible. CRANE, SLATE, TRACE, SALET, ADIEU. They are not competing guesses so much as competing definitions of "best", and once you see which definition each one is answering, picking your own becomes easy.

What a start word is actually for

You will almost never solve on the first guess. With thousands of possible answers the odds are somewhere around one in two thousand, so a first guess spent hoping is a first guess wasted. Its job is to cut the field, and the measure of a good one is how few words are still standing after the board answers.

That is the number our solver ranks by, and it is worth internalising: a word that cannot possibly be the answer is sometimes the better play, because information beats optimism.

Why the popular answers disagree

CRANE and SLATE cover five of the most common letters in English and spread them across positions that vary a lot between words. They are strong general openers and they are easy to remember, which matters more than people admit.

SALET turns up in analyses that assume you are playing to minimise the average number of guesses across every possible answer, with perfect play afterwards. It is an excellent word and a slightly academic one — it optimises for a version of the game where you never make a human mistake on guess three.

ADIEU is the vowel-first answer. Four vowels in one turn tells you a great deal about the shape of the word, and almost nothing about its consonants. It shines when your usual opener comes back blank and leaves you guessing.

TRACE, CRATE and REACT are the same five letters in different orders, and the order genuinely matters: E is far more common at the end of a word than at the start, so where you put your letters changes how often they come back blue rather than amber.

The honest answer

Any word with five distinct, common letters will do almost as well as the theoretical best. The gap between CRANE and SALET is a fraction of a guess averaged over thousands of games — it is real, and it is smaller than the gap between playing your second guess well and playing it badly.

What actually costs people games:

  • Guessing a word you already know is wrong. A grey letter is gone. Reusing it buys nothing and you only have six turns.
  • Putting an amber letter back in the same slot. Amber means the letter is in the word and not there. Same slot, same amber, turn gone.
  • Forgetting the repeated-letter rule. Against SPEND, the second E of SPEED comes back grey. That is not a bug — grey means "no more of this letter", not "not in the word". The rules page works through it.

Try it yourself

Pick an opener and stay with it for a fortnight. A consistent start word gets easier to play from, because you start recognising the patterns it produces. If you would rather test a few first, unlimited will give you as many boards as you want.

More free word games and tools

Wordle Unlimited Play wordle unlimited free, as many rounds as you like, at four to eleven letters. The practice mode the daily game never gave you, with no one-a-day limit and nothing to sign up to. Wordle Archive Every past wordle puzzle, still playable and still free. Catch up on the ones you missed, or play old wordle puzzles from the very beginning, with no account and no subscription. Mini Crossword A free online crossword in five by five, with real clues written from a dictionary rather than trivia. An easy crossword you can finish in a couple of minutes, new every day. Word Search Word search online at four difficulties, on a grid generated fresh every time so you never meet the same puzzle twice. There are printable word search sheets too if you would rather use a pen. Spelling Bee The spelling bee game with your spelling, not ours: seven letters, one in the middle, and every word you can build from them. A daily spelling bee puzzle plus every hive we have set before it. Boggle Play boggle free on a four by four tray: trace every word you can find through touching letters before the clock runs out. A word grid game that scores longer finds higher. Text Twist Text twist online and free: six letters, and every word they can make, against the clock. A word scramble game where finding the six-letter word opens the next round. Word Ladder A word ladder puzzle: change one letter at a time to get from the first word to the last, and every rung has to be a real word. Solve it in as few steps as you can. Cryptogram Cryptogram puzzles in a letter substitution cipher, in the cryptoquote style. Crack a single letter and it fills in everywhere at once, until the whole quote reads. Hangman The hangman game online, at three to eleven letters. Free hangman with a word list long enough that it will not repeat on you, and the one game everybody already knows how to play. Sight Word Games Sight word bingo on a four by four card: a word is called and your child finds it. Built on the Dolch sight words schools have set since 1936, for the words that cannot be sounded out. Phonics Games Phonics games for children learning to read: sound out CVC words one letter at a time, with the missing sound to find. Phonics practice for kids that speaks the word aloud. Wordle for Kids Wordle for kids, age-banded for five to thirteen at three to five letters. Word games for kids that stay inside vocabulary a child that age actually meets, with no ads during play. Wordle Solver A free wordle solver and wordle helper: enter the letters you have found and where they sit, and see every word still possible. No account, and it never shows you the answer unasked. Word Unscrambler Unscramble words instantly: type your letters and get every word they make, longest first. A letter unscrambler that works on anything from three letters to a full rack. Anagram Solver An anagram solver that uses every letter you give it, not just some of them. Rearrange a word or a name into the real words hiding inside it. Word Finder Find words with letters you already hold, and say where they sit. A word finder tool for a board you are part way through rather than a blank rack. Scrabble Word Finder Every playable word from your Scrabble rack, scored on official tile values and sorted highest first. A scrabble helper for the word you cannot quite see. Words With Friends Finder Your rack scored on Words With Friends tile values, which are not the Scrabble ones, against the dictionary that game actually accepts. A words with friends cheat that knows the difference. Crossword Solver A crossword clue solver for a half-filled grid: give it the letters you have and a question mark for the rest, and see every answer that fits.