Top 25 Wordle starting words
Ranked among the 4,036 words that have five different letters, after setting aside plurals and other S or ES forms (see the method below). "Letters found" is the expected number of yellow or green tiles, "greens" the expected number of green tiles, and the score is their sum.
| Rank | Word | Score | Letters found | Greens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | saner | 2.34 | 1.70 | 0.64 |
| 2 | taler | 2.31 | 1.75 | 0.57 |
| 3 | oater | 2.31 | 1.79 | 0.52 |
| 4 | oared | 2.29 | 1.73 | 0.56 |
| 5 | later | 2.29 | 1.75 | 0.54 |
| 6 | raise | 2.29 | 1.78 | 0.51 |
| 7 | tared | 2.29 | 1.69 | 0.60 |
| 8 | ariel | 2.29 | 1.79 | 0.49 |
| 9 | aired | 2.28 | 1.73 | 0.55 |
| 10 | caret | 2.27 | 1.66 | 0.60 |
| 11 | ratel | 2.26 | 1.75 | 0.52 |
| 12 | laser | 2.26 | 1.74 | 0.53 |
| 13 | sayer | 2.25 | 1.67 | 0.59 |
| 14 | rated | 2.24 | 1.69 | 0.56 |
| 15 | cater | 2.24 | 1.66 | 0.58 |
| 16 | dater | 2.23 | 1.69 | 0.55 |
| 17 | sorel | 2.23 | 1.62 | 0.61 |
| 18 | arise | 2.23 | 1.78 | 0.45 |
| 19 | pareo | 2.23 | 1.68 | 0.54 |
| 20 | sated | 2.23 | 1.59 | 0.64 |
| 21 | caner | 2.23 | 1.64 | 0.59 |
| 22 | cared | 2.23 | 1.60 | 0.62 |
| 23 | aider | 2.22 | 1.73 | 0.49 |
| 24 | arose | 2.22 | 1.78 | 0.44 |
| 25 | serai | 2.22 | 1.78 | 0.44 |
Many of the top words are uncommon, such as TALER or OATER, because ENABLE is a broad word-game list. If you want a word you would use in conversation, LATER (#5) and RAISE (#6) are near the top, and ARISE (#18) and AROSE (#24) are close behind.
How well-known starting words compare
| Word | Rank | Score | Letters found | Greens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| raise | 6 of 4,036 | 2.29 | 1.78 | 0.51 |
| slate | 85 of 4,036 | 2.15 | 1.65 | 0.49 |
| crane | 128 of 4,036 | 2.11 | 1.64 | 0.47 |
| adieu | 541 of 4,036 | 1.95 | 1.59 | 0.36 |
| audio | 1,788 of 4,036 | 1.72 | 1.41 | 0.31 |
The vowel-first openers ADIEU and AUDIO find vowels quickly but rank far lower: four vowels leave room for only one consonant, and common consonants like R, L, T and S carry more information.
Most common letters in 5 letter words
Across all 8,618 five-letter words in ENABLE, the leaders are S, E and A, found in 46%, 45% and 40% of words. S ranks high mostly because of plurals, so the ranking above uses the 6,119 words that remain after S and ES forms are set aside. In that list, the share of words containing each letter is:
| Letter | Words containing it | Share |
|---|---|---|
| e | 2,927 | 48% |
| a | 2,551 | 42% |
| r | 2,066 | 34% |
| i | 1,849 | 30% |
| o | 1,845 | 30% |
| l | 1,581 | 26% |
| t | 1,556 | 25% |
| s | 1,490 | 24% |
| n | 1,392 | 23% |
| d | 1,210 | 20% |
| u | 1,191 | 19% |
| y | 1,159 | 19% |
Most common letter in each square
- 1st letter: S (13%), C (8%), B (7%)
- 2nd letter: A (16%), O (14%), E (12%)
- 3rd letter: A (9%), I (9%), R (9%)
- 4th letter: E (20%), I (9%), A (8%)
- 5th letter: E (15%), Y (15%), D (10%)
The pattern explains the top words: they tend to put a common consonant first, a vowel second, and E or R near the end.
5 letter words with the most vowels
The most vowels any five-letter word in ENABLE has is 4 (Y not counted), and 21 words reach it. Ranked by the same score, the strongest are:
aurei 2.19 · uraei 2.14 · ourie 2.05 · aerie 2.04 · louie 2.02 · adieu 1.95 · oorie 1.91 · aurae 1.90 · looie 1.85 · aecia 1.73 · audio 1.72 · areae 1.68
AUREI and URAEI lead because their one consonant is R, the most common consonant in the list. Vowel-heavy starters are a fine choice if you like to pin down vowels first, but they score below balanced words like SANER.
Best 2 starting words
A two-word opener should cover ten different letters. Because the letters do not overlap, the pair's score is simply the sum of the two words' scores. These are the best pairs, found by an exact search over every combination:
| Words | Score | Letters found | Greens |
|---|---|---|---|
| sated + roily | 4.11 | 2.98 | 1.13 |
| sarin + toled | 4.10 | 3.02 | 1.08 |
| saned + roily | 4.09 | 2.95 | 1.14 |
| soled + rainy | 4.08 | 2.95 | 1.13 |
| caret + solid | 4.08 | 2.96 | 1.12 |
Best 3 starting words for Wordle
Three words cover fifteen different letters, which leaves only eleven untested. The best trios:
| Words | Score | Letters found | Greens |
|---|---|---|---|
| cored + suint + palmy | 5.38 | 3.87 | 1.51 |
| saith + puled + corny | 5.37 | 3.87 | 1.50 |
| caret + shily + pound | 5.36 | 3.87 | 1.49 |
| cared + shiny + poult | 5.36 | 3.87 | 1.49 |
| pared + shily + count | 5.36 | 3.87 | 1.49 |
Pairs and trios are made of the strongest arrangement of each set of letters, so they can include rare words. Use the checker at the top to score your own sequence, such as a pair of everyday words you find easier to remember.
How the ranking is calculated
- Start with the 8,618 five-letter words in ENABLE (public domain, with offensive words removed).
- Set aside 2,499 words that are another word plus S or ES, such as TARES (TARE + S) or BOXES (BOX + ES). Left in, they push S into the last square of nearly every top word; the top five would be TARES, LARES, RALES, RATES and NARES.
- For each letter, count how many of the remaining 6,119 words contain it, and how many have it in each of the five squares.
- Score a word by adding, for each different letter it contains, the share of words containing that letter, and for each square, the share of words with the same letter in that square.
- Sort by score, breaking ties alphabetically, and keep words with five different letters for the tables.
The first part of the score is the number of letters you can expect to find, yellow or green, if the answer were a random word from the list; the second part is the number of greens you can expect. The method is deterministic and does not use any game's answer list, so it never changes and contains no spoilers. It also has limits: it treats every word as equally likely, while a real puzzle favours common words.
Wordle strategy after the first guess
A strong opener only pays off if you use the colors well. After the first guess, enter it in the Wordle solver to see which words remain and which guess splits them best, using the same letter-frequency score on just the remaining words. To explore words by letters and positions yourself, use the 5 letter words finder.