Wordle Best First Guess Revealed by Computer

By Tanner Dedmon

Wordle's been the latest casual gaming craze on social media as of late with people posting their blocky results for others to see after brisk games and near-wins. Aside from the results alone, a Wordle meta of sorts has been evolving with people asking one question: What's the best word to start with to get some letters on the board? That word is apparently "later" according to a TikTok user who took it upon themselves to figure out which word Wordle players are best off beginning each game with.

The video below from TikTok user Crvlwanek showed the process of determining the best starting word in Wordle. The video was shared as a response to another TikTok user, linguisticdiscovery, who claimed that "irate" was the best starting word. A linguist seems like a reasonable person to ask when it comes to a word game like Wordle, but Crvlwanek wanted proof.

@crvlwanek

#stitch with @linguisticdiscovery Different method, similar results! #wordle #linguistics #computerscience #python

♬ original sound – Chris

To obtain that proof, the user started by finding the entire word list for Wordle, that word list being the full list of accepted and probable words the game contains. A created script then looked at all the words and determined the frequency of each letter before scoring words based on the frequency of those letters in the words. Once all that's done, the user said the script determined that the "verifiable, best word" is "later."

If you don't want to plug in "later" every time you're faced with a Wordle puzzle, the TikTok showed a couple of other options to add some variety to your games. The 10 words below are considered the best options according to the script the user created:

  1. Later
  2. Alter
  3. Alert
  4. Arose
  5. Irate
  6. Stare
  7. Arise
  8. Raise
  9. Learn
  10. Renal

The linguist wasn't too far off with their guess then considering how "irate" took the No. 5 spot, but there are apparently a few other better guesses before you get to that one. If you don't want to be stuck to a list of the same 10 words over and over, you can stick to what many Wordle players have already figured out by making sure your first Wordle guess is a healthy mix of frequently-used consonants with multiple vowels included in the five-letter word to quickly work towards the puzzle's solution.

[H/T GameSpot]

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