The Best Wordle Starting Words, Ranked by What They Actually Tell You
Your opener is the only guess you fully control. Here is which words earn their keep, why the answer is not simply “the one with most vowels”, and the two-guess opening system that makes the rest of the puzzle feel easy.
Every Wordle player owns exactly one decision before the feedback starts: the opening word. Everything after guess one is deduction; guess one is pure strategy. So it is worth getting right once, and then never thinking about again.
What makes an opener good
A first guess earns its keep by eliminating possibilities, and it does that best when it uses five common, unrepeated letters in likely positions. English letter frequency runs roughly E-T-A-O-I-N-S-H-R, and among five-letter answers specifically, S, E, A, R, O, T, L, I and N do most of the work. The best openers are simply the real words that pack the most of those letters into the most plausible slots — an E at the end, an S at the front, an A in the middle.
That is why the same handful of words tops every serious simulation — including the New York Times' own solver, WordleBot, which grades your guesses against the remaining possibilities each day.
The openers, ranked
| Word | Style | Why it works |
|---|---|---|
| SLATE | Balanced | Five top-ten letters, S up front where it lives, E at the end where it lives. The consensus best all-rounder. |
| CRANE | Balanced | WordleBot's long-time favourite; the R-A-_-E skeleton matches a huge share of answers. |
| TRACE | Balanced | Same letters as CRANE, rearranged; effectively interchangeable. |
| SALET | Optimal* | The mathematically optimal opener in exhaustive searches — but it is an obscure word for a medieval helmet, and its edge over SLATE is tiny. |
| RAISE / ARISE | Vowel-lean | Three vowels plus R and S; a softer version of the ADIEU strategy that still uses common consonants. |
| STARE | Balanced | The same five letters as RATES and TEARS — pick whichever spelling you can type fastest. |
| ADIEU | Vowel-first | Four vowels in one go. Rarely lands greens, but after it you know the word's vowel skeleton almost completely. |
| AUDIO | Vowel-first | ADIEU's rival; swaps E for O. Same philosophy, same trade-off. |
If you want the full simulation numbers behind rankings like this — expected greens, average remaining candidates, the works — the write-up Wordle Openers, Ranked by How Much They Actually Tell You goes through them opener by opener.
The two-guess opening system
Strong players rarely improvise their second guess either. The idea: pick a fixed pair of openers that covers nine or ten distinct common letters, and play both regardless of the first result (unless guess one leaves you nearly certain). Classic pairs:
- SLATE + CORNY — ten distinct letters, both vowel groups touched.
- CRANE + SPILT — covers the top six consonants and three vowels.
- RAISE + TOUCH — vowel-first opening with a consonant sweep behind it.
After two such guesses you will typically have seen most of the answer's letters, and the puzzle becomes a placement exercise: think in patterns (“_ O U N D”, “S _ A _ E”) rather than letters. A methodical approach to that phase — and to openers generally — is covered from a different angle in this Wordle strategy guide.
Three opening mistakes to stop making
- Repeating a letter on guess one. EERIE tells you about three letters; SLATE tells you about five.
- Chasing yesterday's answer patterns. The answer list has no memory; your streak does not care that yesterday ended in -IGHT.
- Switching openers daily. A fixed opener turns the whole game into pattern recognition on a familiar baseline — which is exactly how you get faster.
Frequently asked questions
It is a good strategy, not the best word. Simulations rank it below SLATE and CRANE because vowels are less discriminating than common consonants — but if you enjoy knowing the vowel skeleton after one guess, it plays perfectly well.
Yes, slightly. In hard mode every revealed hint must be reused, so an opener that lands greens early can trap you. Balanced openers like CRANE, whose hits tend to be yellows you can re-position, are safer than S-heavy words.
Marginally. The NYT curates the answer list, so optimal-opener calculations shift by fractions of a guess. Nothing has dethroned the SLATE/CRANE family since the game went mainstream — pick one and spend your attention on guesses two to six, or zoom out with our complete guide to word games.