You may intuitively know that the most common starting letter for a daily Wordle is "S". What you may not know is how common it is. Roughly 18% of the possible Wordle answers start with "S".
A pair of MIT researchers recently set out to find the optimal starting word for the popular online puzzle, discovering that the statistically superior first guess is SALET, which is a 15th century helmet.
So RATIO first, then MENDS, then LUCKY. That's it. With those three choices, you'll have slimmed down the list of possible letters to the point that figuring out the solution with your final guesses becomes significantly easier.
So starting words like “ratio,” “irate,” “stain,” or “stare” that include those commonly used letters are great options. There are more English-language words that start with S than any other letter, so a starting word that begins with S is also a good first guess.
Start with a word that has a lot of vowels.
Some Wordle players have found success in starting with a word that has several vowels in it. “Adieu,” “audio” or “canoe,” for instance, may be good words to start with because at least three out of the five letters are vowels.
Shh, psst, and hmm do not have vowels, either vowel symbols or vowel sounds. There is some controversy whether they are in fact “words,” however.
Crwth and cwtch are Welsh words that English has adopted. Grrrl and grrls are slang words, and phpht is a commonly accepted onomatopoeic word.
Typically, y represents a consonant when it starts off a word or syllable, as in yard, lawyer, or beyond. Technically, this sound of \y\ is considered a semivowel or glide, which is a less prominent vowel speech sound that occurs in the articulation of two consecutive vowel sounds unequal in prominence.
Five-Letter Y Vowel Words for Wordle
The Wordle answer on March 27, 2022, was “nymph.” Needless to say, that word really threw a lot of people for a loop, which is why they turned to our Wordle solver for help.
However, it is not included in any major English dictionary. There are several seven-letter words containing all the vowels, including SEQUOIA, EULOGIA, MIAOUED, ADOULIE, EUCOSIA, EUNOMIA, EUTOPIA, MOINEAU, and DOULEIA. The relatively common French word OISEAU (meaning bird) contains all five vowels, once each.
The longest words that contain no vowel and no 'y' are crwth (a Celtic stringed instrument), cwtch (a shed, cuddle, or hiding place), phpht (an expression of mild irritation), and grrrl (part of the phrase 'riot girl', which describes a subculture that mixes feminism and punk rock).
The three most common are NUMBER, PEOPLE, and BEFORE. These are good words to use to make get rid of hard-to-use letters, such as both Ps, a B and an F, and a U and a B.
And the first result that popped up from Real Statistics Using Excel (which seemed credible) said: “Since there are 2,315 possible target words in Wordle, the probability that you will guess the target in exactly one try is 1/2315 = 0.000432.
"Derby, flank, ghost, winch, jumps." After typing in the magic words, Myles had one chance to solve the puzzle.
Wordle has 2,308 possible answers and 12,545 allowed guesses. The global average for solving Wordle is 4.016 guesses, with Sweeden being the best country (3.72) and Egypt the worst (4.42). The best word to start with is “SALET”, followed by “CRATE”, “TRACE”, “SLATE”, and “REAST”.
Over 15% of Wordle's words of the day start with S. Only six other starting letters appear in more than 5% of Wordle words. In order of frequency, they are C, B, T, P, A, and F. These starting letters might seem pretty surprising, but they are close to the order of general five-letter words.
EUNOIA is the shortest word in English which has all five vowels.
Unfortunately, there are no words in English that are made up entirely of vowels, so we will have to settle for the next best thing: a five-letter word containing four of them.