PC Gamer is supported by its audience. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more
By published
Five-letter combos to start you on the right foot.
Looking for the best Wordle starting word? For many of us, Wordle has rapidly grown from cute social media novelty to a daily habit; the popular word guessing game is as much a part of our everyday lives as fresh coffee, spam emails, and the burning desire to buy a dozen games in the latest Steam sale we will never quite find the time to play.
The allure is its simplicity. Every day one new puzzle is posted, giving everyone on the planet just six goes at guessing one 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—and once a word has been submitted, 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 that the right letter in the wrong place, and grey that the letter isn’t present in today’s Wordle at all.
That said, one of our top Wordle tips is to find the best word on which to use your first guess. To make sure you continue your winning record, here are the best starting words in Wordle.
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.
Starters
What’s more, I update our Wordle section 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.
Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.
Thank you for signing up to PC Gamer. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
