Best Starting Words for Word Guess, Plus Tips

A good opener is not the word with the most common letters. It is the word that splits the answer list into the most small groups. After you guess, the colors you see narrow the possible answers to one group. If that group is small, your second guess is easy.

So for every word the game accepts, we checked the colors it would produce against each of the 451 answers, using the same rules as the game (including how repeated letters are colored). Then we measured how many answers would still be possible, on average, after the first guess. Lower is better. Every answer is equally likely to be picked, so this average is a fair score.

Before the rankings, here is what our answer list looks like. The chart shows the share of answers that contain each letter at least once.

A few patterns are worth remembering:

• E is in more than half of all answers, and 108 answers (24%) end in E. If you have one unknown slot at the end, E is the first thing to try.
• Plurals are almost absent. Only 8 answers end in S, while 67 start with S, more than any other first letter. Use S at the start of a guess, not the end.
• Positions matter. The most common second letters are R and O. The middle slot is most often A (88 answers), then I and O. The most common last letters are E, T, R and H.
• Repeated letters are common. 109 answers (24%) use a letter twice, like SPEED or GLASS. Do not rule out a repeat just because a letter is already green.
• Most answers have one or two vowels. 162 answers use only one of A, E, I, O and U (some more than once), and 253 use exactly two. Only one answer uses four.

These are the strongest everyday openers against our list. "Answers left" is the average number still possible after the first guess, out of 451. "Worst case" is the biggest group you could be left with.

Two less familiar words score slightly higher still: ORATE (9.1) and CRATE (9.4). The differences at the top are small, so pick the one you like typing. Any word in this table will leave you with about 10 answers on average, which is roughly a 98% cut in one guess.

Our pick is TRACE. It can produce 110 different color patterns against our list, more than any other word the game accepts, it puts T, R, A, C and E in common positions, and it is easy to remember.

Some players like a fixed two word start. If you open with TRACE, the best everyday partner is SOLID, which uses five new letters. Together they leave an average of just 1.7 possible answers, and they pin down the exact answer for 281 of the 451 words (62%) before your third guess.

Other good pairs: TRACE then BOILS (1.65 left), CRANE then SPILT (1.69), STARE then CLOUD (1.87) and ARISE then CLOUT (1.85).

A fixed second word is a safety net, not a rule. If your first guess already shows two or three colored tiles, you will usually do better by guessing a word that could actually be the answer.

Here is a real game against one of our answers, using the TRACE and SOLID start.

After TRACE, only 10 answers fit A in the middle and E at the end with no T, R or C. SOLID cut that to four. The trap here is guessing those four one by one: BLAME, PLANE, WHALE, FLAME could take four more tries. Instead, guess a word that tells them apart. BLAME works perfectly, because each of the four answers would color it differently. It could even win on the spot.

1. Count what is left before you guess. When there are three or more candidates, your guess should split them, not just hope. A word that could be the answer and splits the rest is the best of both.
2. Watch for rhyming traps. Endings like _IGHT, _OUND and _ATCH have many answers. Our list includes EIGHT, FIGHT, LIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT and TIGHT. If you see one of these families, spend a guess on a word packed with the possible first letters.
3. Move yellow letters to new spots. A yellow letter is in the word but not where you put it. Try it in a new position every time, so each guess tells you something new.
4. Remember repeats. About one answer in four repeats a letter. If you are stuck with few letters left, try doubling one you already have, like SPEED, SHEEP or STILL.
5. Think about position, not just letters. S likes the front, E likes the end, and A loves the middle. When placing a yellow letter, start with its most common slot.
6. Use the keyboard colors. The on-screen keyboard shows every letter you have ruled out. Glance at it before each guess so you never waste a tile on a gray letter.
7. Play the daily for practice, then go unlimited. The daily Word Guess is the same for everyone, so you can compare. The main game gives you a new word every time you finish, as many times as you like.

Want more of the same kind of thinking? Code Breaker uses the same feedback idea with colors instead of letters, and our games like Word Guess collection lists more daily word puzzles.