The “KNOLL”edge You Need To Always Win At Wordle Part 2

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What are the best starting words?

According to the experts, some of the best starting words are:

• arose

• soare

• later

• saine

• tares

• lares

• rales

• rates

• cares

So, what should you guess if you want to win? Generally speaking, the strategy you pick depends on whether you simply want to have the best chance to win in six tries or you want to win in as few guesses as possible. That being said, the experts agree that going after the vowels is a good opening move. For this reason, the words ADIEU and AUDIO are extremely popular opening guesses that give a lot of info on the vowels. However, those words will leave you at a loss for consonants, and you will likely need to repeat some vowels if you want to learn anything about consonants.

Another common piece of advice is to include as many different commonly used consonants as possible to narrow things down. Words like SIRED, ANTES, TONER, RINSE, and RATES are good first picks as you have both some vowels and top 10 consonants too.

Many statistically-minded people like to make the absolute most out of their starting two guesses by squeezing in all of the top 10 most common letters. That means you need two words that include all of E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, and L. If that’s your game, might we suggest HATER and LIONS? Or maybe RINSE and LOATH?

What Dictionary.com team members love to start with (yes, we are obsessed with Wordle, too)

While trying to stack the odds is all well and good, everyone has their own preferences and favorite words that they like to use. Because at the end of the day, the most important thing is to have fun.

Dictionary.com Employees’ Wordle Survey 

Name: Mike Porter
Job title: senior software engineer
Word: laugh
Why I like it: A good mix of vowels and consonants.

Name: Heena Narottam
Job title: senior software engineer
Word: stear
Why I like it: I like it because it uses the top two most common vowels and the top three most common consonants.

Name: Heather Bonikowski
Job title: lexicographer
Word: ocean
Why I like it: First vowel-heavy word that came to me, and it works pretty well.

Name: Mike Sandula
Job title: senior software engineer
Word: earth, noise, adieu
Why I like it: They cover a lot of common letters. Adieu because of the number of vowels plus it makes me feel fancy.

Name: Jess Miller
Job title: director of marketing
Word: group, heart
Why I like it: I used to do group but switched to heart for more common letters. I switch it up sometimes, though.

Some of our users’ favorite words to start with

Take a look at the best starting words (according to you!) and join in the conversation on Twitter.

adieu, aisle, alien, alter, anime, aorta, arise, aside, audio, bacon, beaut, bored, cause, crate, crack, crest, earns, eight, farts, feast, great, harpy, hoist, ideal, ideas, ingot, irate, learn, least, loyal, meany, meats, media, mousy, niche, notes, omega, onery, opera, peace, pears, pilot, pithy, plant, point, ports, power, prior, quest, rages, rates, ratio, rents, rouse, scale, shape, shore, snare, soare, sport, stare, steak, stern, stoic, stony, store, strap, table, teams, tears, those, tired, touch, train, water, yeast, youth

Some highlights from our social media manager:

stare. It covers 5 of the most common letters, & the 2 most common vowels.

— All we are is Dustin the wind. Fully Vaxxed #BLM (@sqlcheesecake) January 21, 2022

I use AUDIO or ADIEU, and knock out those vowels right off the bat.

— Literally Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat (@ThreeKobolds) January 21, 2022