Wordle, the five-letter daily word guessing game, has absolutely exploded across digital platforms, especially since The New York Times Company purchased it in 2022 from software engineer Josh Wardle. The hype is real, as is the determination of Wordle players to find the best Wordle starting words. But could the binary thinking of what we believe about Wordle-winning starters be outdated?

A longstanding favorite has been circulating within the Wordle community for years. Surprisingly, it's not a common verb or a renowned historical figure—it's "ADIEU." Despite its widespread popularity, this cherished word falls short and could be confusing your daily game more than you think.

Most Popular Starting Guesses In Wordle NYT

In an effort to untangle the complexity for Wordle enthusiasts, WordTips went on a mission to decipher the ideal starter word to prove why Adieu might be outdated. We meticulously examined suggestions from WordleBots, delved into the realm of popular fan favorites, scrutinized letter frequencies in English, and delved into information entropy introduced by Claude Shannon. Here’s what we found out:

Understanding Wordle Dynamics

Before we started our deep dive into the best Wordle appetizers (see what we did there), we wanted to examine how Wordle works. Sure, everyone knows you need to find Wordle's five-letter word in six guesses, but how does knowing letter frequencies in English words help you?

Based on a sample of 40,000 English words, bearing in mind that a Wordle game only starts with 2,309 possible solutions (according to NYT Wordle Bot), the Cornell Department of Math says that the letter E comes up in 21912 words out of a possible 40,000. In comparison, the letter D crops up in 7874 words. While the letter Z is around 128. So, the odds of E being in your daily Wordle are statistically likely even in a sample of 2,309 possible solutions.

Wordle Letter Frequencies In English Infographic

What We Did:

Wordtips wanted to explore the intricacies of Wordle to discover the best Wordle starting word. We took the top Wordle bot solutions according to NYT, looked at the frequency of English letters in a sample size of 40,000 words by the Cornell Department of Math, and then went deep into the realm of Wordle solvers through /r/coolguide and /r/puzzles/ comments to determine what fans think the best Wordle starting word is. Have fans branched out from Adieu?

Key Findings:

Since Wordle debuted in 2021, the letter E has appeared in 522 Wordle answers at least once.
62% of users on /r/coolguide said they use the same Wordle starting word every day.
If you use more vowels in your starting word, you’re less likely to fare well with consonants.
A is the second most commonly used letter after E in wordle answers in any position.
6.1% of users on /r/coolguide and /r/puzzles/ keep their guess up to chance, let someone else pick for them, or take the first word they see that day.
Wordle players can be partitioned into random vs. routine.
The higher the level of uncertainty in starter guesses, the more information you’ll gain, for better or worse!

ADIEU: The Popular Choice, But Perhaps Not The Best

According to the NYT user data, most players preferred random starting guesses between June 15 and August 22. However, a staggering 5% of users preferred a more streamlined approach. Opting for ADIEU as their starting guess, meaning goodbye or, perhaps more formally, stemming from the Old French word a Dieu or a Deu, meaning "I Commend (you) to God," according to Etymology Dictionaries.

This opener, which uses four out of the five (or seven- let's not forget the Y and W chameleons) vowels, quickly became widespread and, according to a recent New York Times analysis, is still pretty popular among daily players as their opening starter word.

But what made it so popular in the first place? ADIEU has more vowels than consonants, and according to NYT's data, vowel-heavy starter words are more popular among human Wordle players; AUDIO, another four-vowel word, is a close runner-up. But why are we obsessed with vowels? Well, Information entropy, which measures uncertainty and surprise, might just have the answer.

In Wordle, the abundance of vowels in words like AUDIO, ADIEU, and ABOUT introduces a higher level of uncertainty in starter guesses, otherwise known as entropy. The higher the entropy or uncertainty of a word, the more information you'll gain.

Therefore, a limited number of vowels—only five, and occasionally seven with “y” and “w”—means that each vowel carries significant weight in revealing the potential letters. The strategic advantage of choosing words with higher entropy means you’ll gain more information quickly. While this approach may result in positive and negative revelations, the overarching goal is maximizing the amount of useful data gained per guess.

However, the limitations of using vowel-rich words are tenfold when collecting useful data for starting words. While vowels carry a lot of weight because there's less of them, there's less of them, so their hit rate is lower. Meaning you might find vowels in your first guess with ADIEU or AUDIO, but you won't find many consonants. In comparison, the English alphabet has twenty-one consonants and five vowels, with W and Y occasionally subbing for either. So, actually, a starter word with more consonants than vowels might be a better game plan.

SLATE & Alternative Approaches

Since NYT upleveled Wordle Bot to 2.0, its first top pick has shifted numerous times. Instead of knowing the Wordle solution list, Wordle Bot 2.0 goes in without any prior information, meaning it's closer to the average human Wordle solver than it was before, as it has a wider dictionary list to choose from. It isn't foolproof. But one advantage is that it studies patterns and uses previous Wordle answers to suggest solutions.

In regular mode, WordleBot consistently chooses SLATE, TRACE, and CRATE as its new top preferences, replacing CRANE, AUDIO, and ADIEU. However, for hard mode, the bot (at least for now) favors LEAST instead of DEALT.

These suggestions are pretty good starter words if we look at letter frequencies in English. Plus, the balance of consonants between vowels is much more balanced than AUDIO and ADIEU. For instance, if you take a quick look at TRACE, it contains an equal balance of the most useful letters, R, A, E, and T.

Most Common Letters Found In Wordle Starting Words Infographic

Player Perspectives

While data might have a lot of answers, the Wordle community is also pretty devoted. Wordle fans have their favorite starting words. Players can usually be categorized into two approaches: Routine and Random.

Routine vs. Randomization

According to /coolguides comments, 279 out of 450 or 62% of users have stickability when it comes to their favorite Wordle starter words. They prefer to stick to what they know rather than change it. Thrill seekers, on the other hand, prefer to leave it up to chance; 17 out of 450, or 3.7%, say they prefer a random approach, while eleven users, or 2.4%, say they get inspired by real life, whether that's the Connections answer, past Wordle answer, or the first five-letter word they see in a New York Times article.

Some Leave It To Their Partners

Around 2.4% of users say they prefer to leave it to their partners or colleagues. Considering this low number, either everyone is lying, or there are better approaches.

Alternative Wordle Starter Words

So, if E, A, R, O, T. L, I. S, N, and C show up the most in our Wordle answers, then why aren’t we using them a little more? For information purposes, we came up with our own Wordle starting words based on letter frequency, fan faves, and most commonly used Wordle letters since it debuted with the Wordle answer CIGAR.