The best Wordle starting words

Want to know the best starting words in Wordle? Wordle may have taken the world(le) by storm, but struggling to find the answer can feel like a frustrating start to the morning. If you want to know the best Wordle starting words so that you can easily find the Wordle solution every day in just a few tries, we’ve got you covered.

Below, we’ll explain the best starting words in Wordle so that you can narrow down the best way to guess the daily Wordle without cheating.

Best Wordle starting words

The natural answer when trying to find the best Wordle starting word is to use vowels. This helps you shape your word in the following guesses by combining the vowels that you know with common consonants that appear in a lot of words, like R, S, and T.

However, according to research done by Derek Horstmeyer, Professor of Finance at George Mason University, and his students, this isn't actually the best Wordle strategy. According to their research, the best Wordle starting words are those with just one or two vowels. Since most words have vowels, it is more strategic to actually burn through common consonants with your early words. This can help you narrow down the letters in the Wordle, which you can then combine with vowels to easily find the solution.

Unfortunately, that means fan-favourite words such as 'ouija' may not actually be optimal Wordle starting words. Below, you can find the best Wordle starting words according to their research, along with a few of my personal favourites that should help you find the solution quickly:

Slice

Slice is the best starting word according to this research, and it's easy to see why. By quickly identifying one of the most common letters in the English language, 'e', along with another vowel and some common consonants, you can instantly start reducing your pool of letters. While this might not get you a bunch of green letters on your first try, you should find that the information you do gain helps set the stage for an easy win by the third guess.

Tried

Just like in the example above, 'tried' lets you leap closer to the solution by finding or cutting out some extremely common letters. As you'd expect, 'e' and 'i' are both here again along with some common consonants, but it's also important to consider the letter groups that this could eliminate. For example, the suffix '-ied' is extremely common in the English language, so searching for that on your first turn can help eliminate a much longer list of words.

Crane

'Crane' follows a very similar pattern to the above. It lets you eliminate some common letters, while targeting some pairs, such as 'cr-' and '-ne', that will help filter out a lot of other words. This also helps catch other common pairs even if both letters don't appear in this word, such as '-ck'. Remember that a row of grey tiles here isn't a bad thing - that can actually prove really useful! If none of the letters in 'crane' are correct, you rule out a list of words that is far too long to list here. This can help shift your thoughts onto other roots, prefixes, and suffixes that could guide you to the solution.

Bakes

Bakes is an important one for me. It eliminates 'a', 'e' and 's', which are all extremely common in the English language on their own. However, it also cuts out any words that contain the suffix '-es', which really helps narrow down the solution. If you want to find the Wordle solution as efficiently as possible, finding common grammatical themes is really important.

Reach

'Reach' is another excellent Wordle starting word, as it lets you either find or eliminate 'r', which is an incredibly common consonant, along with the usual vowels 'a' and 'e'. However, this word also targets the '-ch' suffix, which is incredibly useful for narrowing down the answer. Like all of the examples above, finding words that combine common letters with those structures that appear in lots of words is the best way to find the Wordle answer quickly.

Roast

Roast is a fun one that I first thought of because I wanted a roast dinner, but it is also a very useful starting word that could help you find the Wordle solution effortlessly. It is packed with common letters, including the consonants that pop up most frequently in the English language, while also identifying the pair '-st' which could narrow down the answer massively.

Of course, Wordle also comes down to luck in those final stages. Sometimes, the word is right on the tip of your tongue and still seems impossible to find. Some days are just bad days.

With these starting words, you should quickly find the correct answer in Wordle. If these tips make Wordle a bit too easy, take a look at some other fun Wordle variants that make things a little more challenging, such as Quordle or Semantle. To stop staring at letters all of the time, take a look at Nerdle to play Wordle with numbers.