What is the best starting word for Wordle?

Wordle became a hit in 2022 after going viral and getting millions of people to play every day. To start your game, you need an opening guess and we’ve picked out some key guesses including, statistically, the best ones.

Now, everyone’s dream in Wordle is to try and crack the word in one, but it’s a very hard thing to do. So we think it’s more sensible to try and aim for two or three attempts and if you can do that, your performance review, in the long run, will look pretty nifty indeed.

Your opening salvo of words does need to be on point though. If you start throwing in X’s and Y’s left, right, and center then you’re probably going to harm your chances, this is why we’ve put together this handy guide for you.

What is the best starting word for Wordle?

Statistically, the best starting word is ‘crane’. Although there are statistically thousands of five-letter words that could comprise a Wordle puzzle, the owners of the game have formulated an algorithm that concluded that ‘crane’ is the best starting word for the game.

Wordle’s owners, the New York Times, had this to say about crane: “WordleBot solves the 2,309 possible Wordles using the fewest number of guesses when it starts with ‘Crane’ in normal mode and ‘Dealt’ in hard mode.”

Even though there are words that contain three vowels, crane contains solid vowels and consonants too. So if you want to get off to a hot start, then consider using crane to get you on the right track.

Wordle starting word alternatives

If you want to buck the trend, however, then some other popular words have long been considered the elite in terms of starting Wordle answers: irate, salet, crate, and even notes.

According to video game designer and programmer Tyler Glaeil who went into some advanced calculations we won’t go into, soare, roate, and raise, are the best picks for starting Wordle, with the former of the three options being the top selection.

He said: “ROATE is the mathematically optimal first guess in Wordle. RAISE is very slightly less good, but gives you a chance of a hole-in-one. Wordle is solved!”

So whichever one you decide to go for, make sure it keeps you consistent in your goal to achieve the Wordle in two or three tries!

Here’s another couple of different Wordle games to pique your interest too: 7 games like Wordle you should try | How to play Fortle: Fortnite Wordle clone explained