Best Wordle starting words, ranked by letter frequency
Every Wordle player has a favorite first word, and most favorites were picked by feel. This page picks by counting instead: we tallied how often each letter appears across the 6,677 five-letter words in our Wordle Solver list, scored the familiar openers by how many of their letters an average word holds, and checked the winners against past answers.
How we counted
The list is the one our Wordle Solver searches: 6,677 five-letter words built from SCOWL, the spell-checker word lists, plus every official answer in our archive. For each letter we counted the words that contain it at least once, because that is what a first guess learns: whether the letter is in the answer at all.
E leads by a wide margin: 3,055 words, 45.8 percent. Then S at 2,978 words, 44.6 percent, and A at 2,667 words, 39.9 percent. The next tier is R at 31.2 percent, O at 29.0 percent, I at 27.6 percent, L at 25.3 percent and T at 24.7 percent. N follows at 21.8 percent and U at 18.4 percent. At the bottom sit Q at 0.9 percent, J at 1.8 percent, X at 2.2 percent and Z at 2.4 percent: fun letters, terrible openers.
A word's score on this page is the sum of its five letters' percentages, read as the average number of its letters a random word from the list contains. AROSE scores 190.5 percent, so an average answer holds 1.90 of its letters. It is a simple count, not a simulation, and the next section is honest about where that matters.
One caution about S. A dictionary list carries thousands of plurals, which inflates S, especially at the end of a word. Published counts of actual past answers tell a slightly different story: E still leads at about 46 percent of answers, A sits at about 40 percent and R at about 36 percent, but S drops to about 26 percent, and only about 2 percent of answers end in S. The core letter set is the same in both counts - E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S - but position matters for S, and the picks below use it at the start of a word, not the end.
The picks, in order
1. AROSE - 1.90 letters on average. A, R, O, S and E are five of the six most common letters in the count, and three of them are vowels. AROSE is the pure frequency winner: no other familiar opener packs more common letters into five different slots. Its one soft spot is that it never tests T, L or I, so a gray AROSE leaves a wide field.
2. RAISE and ARISE - 1.89. The same five letters, A, R, I, S and E, in two orders. They trade AROSE's O for I, the seventh most common letter, and gain a third vowel look at a different spot. RAISE puts A second, where A appears most often in the list - 1,138 words, 17.0 percent, have A as their second letter.
3. STARE - 1.86. S, T, A, R and E: five of the top eight letters, with S in its strongest spot, first, and E in its common closing spot. Its anagrams TEARS and RATES score exactly the same on letter frequency, but both spend S in the final slot, the weakest place to put it in a real answer, so STARE is the order to play.
4. AISLE - 1.83. A, I, S, L and E swap STARE's T and R for I and L. It is the pick for players who want to clear L early: L shows up in a quarter of the list, and it hides in the middle of words where a late discovery costs the most guesses.
5. SLATE - 1.80. S, L, A, T and E, the longtime solver favorite. S is the most common first letter in the list, starting 845 words, and E is the second most common final letter in the list, ending 759. SLATE gives up a little raw frequency to AROSE - a tenth of a letter per game - and buys two strong positional tests in return.
6. CRATE and TRACE - 1.58, and CRANE - 1.56. The C family. C appears in 16.8 percent of the list and N in 21.8 percent, both below the top tier, so these three score lower on a pure count. They stay on the list because C and N separate candidates well once the vowels are known, and because solver simulations that play out whole games, not just first-guess frequency, rank them close to SLATE. The honest summary: the gap from first to sixth here is about a third of a letter per game.
Words that look good, and are not
ADIEU scores 1.50 and AUDIO scores 1.33. The vowel trap. Four vowels feels like information, but U appears in only 18.4 percent of the list and D in 18.0 percent, and a vowel-only opener learns nothing about S, R, T, L or N, the consonants that actually separate one candidate from the next. Knowing an answer has a U rarely ends a game; knowing it has no R often does.
SPEED scores 1.24. The repeat trap. A doubled letter tests only four different letters, so a whole slot buys a second look at E instead of a first look at anything else. Repeats earn their place from the second guess on, once the colors say a letter is worth doubling.
JAZZY scores 0.59. The rare-letter trap. J, Z, Q and X together appear in fewer words than V alone. An opener built on them is a lottery ticket: spectacular one day in fifty, silent the other forty-nine.
Position counts, for players who want them
Frequency is only half the count; where a letter sits is the other half. In our list, the most common first letters are S with 845 words, then C with 557, B with 488, P with 453 and T with 425. The most common second letters are A with 1,138 and O with 1,022. E's favorite spot is fourth, where it lands in 1,337 words, 20.0 percent of the list.
That is why two words with the same letters are not the same opener. STARE and RATES hold identical letters and identical frequency scores, but STARE tests S first and E last, the spots where those letters do their best work, while RATES spends both tests in weaker spots. When two candidates tie on letters, play the order that matches the position counts.
The second guess
A great opener still needs a partner. If your first guess comes back all gray, the fastest second guess shares none of its letters, so two guesses test ten different letters. After SLATE, play CRONY: C, R, O, N and Y are all new, and they are the strongest letters SLATE did not test. After CRANE, play SLOTH, which brings in S, L, O, T and H, again ten different letters across the two guesses.
If the first guess does hit, drop the script and obey the colors: greens stay in place, yellows move, and the second guess should test the untested top letters, R, O, I, L and N, inside the shape the colors allow. Our Wordle Solver does that narrowing for you: enter the guess and its colors and it lists every word that still fits.
How to choose yours
The difference between the best opener on this page and the sixth is about a third of a letter per game, roughly one extra letter found every three games. That is real, but it is smaller than the edge from knowing your opener's follow-ups cold. Pick one word from the top six, play it every day, and learn what its color patterns usually mean. Switching openers daily throws away that learned half of the advantage to chase the counted half.
Common questions
What is the single best Wordle starting word?
By letter frequency across our 6,677-word list, AROSE, at 1.90 letters found on average. SLATE, at 1.80, is the closest challenger and tests S and E in stronger positions. Either is a sound daily opener; the gap between them is a tenth of a letter per game.
Is ADIEU a good starting word?
It is a popular one, but the count says no. ADIEU scores 1.50 against AROSE's 1.90, because its four vowels include the uncommon U and it tests no common consonant at all. Vowels matter, but two or three of them are enough on a first guess.
How many vowels should a starting word have?
Two or three. Every pick in our top six carries two vowels, except AROSE, RAISE and ARISE, which carry three. One vowel risks learning nothing about the answer's shape; four spends the guess on the letters that separate candidates the least.
Should I ever start with a repeated letter?
No. A repeat tests one fewer letter, and the count punishes it directly: SPEED, with its doubled E, scores 1.24, near the bottom of the familiar openers. Save repeats for later guesses, when a green or yellow says the letter is really there.