Wordlehas become quite the worldwide sensation, with the Internet seemingly obsessed with solving its daily word puzzles where they’re tasked with figuring out a five-letter word in six guesses. When it comes toWordle, having a strong starting word is important for success, and so a lot of the discussion has revolved around which words people use to start their dailyWordlegame.
Scientist Andrew Steele is the latest to offer their opinion on thebest starting word inWordle, using math to come to their conclusion. Steele recently uploaded a video to his YouTube channel where he argues thatWordleis actually a mathematical puzzle instead of a word one. Steele explained howWordleis about fact-finding, with players needing to use their guesses to figure out as much about the answer as possible.
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Steele then pointed out thedifferentWordlestrategiesthat players use to try to be successful at the game, like how many try to figure out the vowels first by making guesses like “ADIEU” and “AUDIO.” Others will try to guess words that use some of the most common letters in the English language, like “STONE,” for example.
Steele goes into a lot more detail in the video, but his ultimate conclusion is that the best starting word inWordleis “TRACE.” According to Steele’s results, TRACE can help players solve any givenWordlepuzzle in an average of 3.62 turns. So anyone that is struggling with solving thedailyWordlepuzzlein six turns may want to consider using “TRACE” as their first guess in the game moving forward.
Steele is not the first person to try to use their expertise to figure out the bestWordlestarting word. Others have also thrown their hat in the ring, with linguist and TikTok user linguisticdiscovery claiming that the best word to start with is “IRATE.” This was disputed bycomputer scientist and fellow TikTok user crvlwalnek, who claimed that the bestWordlestarting word was actually “LATER.”
Ultimately, any of these words are likely strong candidates forWordleplayers to use out of the gate. And really they can use whatever words they want, and they will stand a decent shot at solving any given puzzle. There are times that players might feel tricked, though, and fail as a result, like theWordlefrom February 9that used the word “HUMOR” despite those in the UK being used to spelling it like “HUMOUR” instead.
Wordleis available now.
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