Looking for the best starting word to crack today's Wordle (opens in new tab)? For many of us, Wordle (opens in new tab) started as a cute social media novelty but eventually became a cozy daily habit. The popular word guessing game is now as ingrained in my life as fresh coffee, spam emails, and the burning desire to buy a dozen games in the latest Steam sale I'll never quite find the time to play.
The allure is Wordle's simplicity. Every day one new puzzle is posted, giving everyone on the planet just six goes at guessing a five-letter word. Each guess must be a valid US English word—you can't enter "AEIOU" to easily find out which vowels are present, or "SSSSS" to nail the location of a slippery consonant. Once you submit a word, each letter is flipped to reveal one of three coloured boxes:
🟩 A green square lets you know you've got the right letter in the right place
🟨 Yellow says that a correct letter is in the wrong place
⬜ Grey means the letter isn't present in today's Wordle at all
Once you get those basics down, you're ready to start optimizing with our top Wordle tips (opens in new tab). One of those tips, though, was worth its own article: finding the best word to use for your first guess. To keep your winning streak alive, here are the best Wordle starting words.
How to choose
How to choose the best Wordle starting word
A solid first guess contains two vowels and three consonants. Every Wordle is virtually guaranteed to have at least one vowel, so if your opening guess contains two of the five then there's a good chance you've already found the right one. If not there are now only three others to choose from.
As for the consonants, pick words containing commonly-used letters such as "S", "R", "T", and "N" as this is more likely to return a positive response in the least number of guesses, which in turn rules out thousands of incorrect answers. Think about it: even if you only know today's Wordle contains an "R" in it somewhere, you can immediately rule out answers like "SLICK", "POLES", and "CLIMB".
Next, follow up your starter with a secondary guess that's been specially selected to avoid every letter your previous entry got wrong, while still adhering to my above advice. At worst you should be left with one remaining vowel to nail down (unless today's word is one of those that decides to go with "Y"), and a reasonable selection of consonants with which to make a series of educated guesses.
Starting word list
The best Wordle starting word list
There are thousands of words that qualify, but below you'll find my personal top 10 list of useful starters and complementary second words to help make your daily Wordle a breeze. I've listed the secondary words in the order they best support my suggested starters for easy pairing. Mix them up as you like, though, as any "good" word that doesn't tread on the toes of your opener will always be a step in the right direction:
Starters
- ALOFT
- CLEAR
- GUILT
- INTRO
- OPENS
- PRONE
- SLIME
- STAIN
- TREAD
- UNDER
Secondaries
- SWIPE
- POINT
- ADORE
- DUELS
- TRIAL
- LIFTS
- URBAN
- RULED
- SOILY
- FOAMY
What's more, I update our Wordle (opens in new tab) page with a helpful hint as well as the complete solution for each daily puzzle, so you're only ever as stumped at today's hottest puzzle game as you want to be.
