Best words to start Wordle
RAISE is the best first guess in our test: across 1,815 likely five-letter answers it leaves about 43 possible words on average. ARISE and STARE come close. Follow RAISE with TONAL and two guesses leave about 4.6 answers. The tables rank 25 openers.
Top 3 starting words
- raise
- arise
- stare
Best two-word opening: RAISE then TONAL, which leaves about 4.6 answers on average.
Example: what RAISE tells you
Here is RAISE played against six of the most common likely answers. "Same colours" is how many of the 1,815 answers would show exactly that row, which is how many words you would still have to choose from.
| Answer | RAISE shows | Same colours |
|---|---|---|
| first | raise | 1 |
| after | raise | 33 |
| other | raise | 90 |
| there | raise | 32 |
| later | raise | 19 |
| world | raise | 71 |
RAISE splits the 1,815 answers into 127 different colour rows. The worst case is an all-grey row, shared by 107 answers; most rows are much smaller. Averaged over every possible answer, you are left with about 43.5 words, the number the ranking below sorts by.
Top 25 Wordle starting words
| # | Word | Answers left (avg) | At least one green | Letters found (avg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | RAISE | 43.5 | 45% | 1.84 |
| 2 | ARISE | 46.5 | 41% | 1.84 |
| 3 | STARE | 50.6 | 42% | 1.85 |
| 4 | CARTE | 50.6 | 45% | 1.77 |
| 5 | LATER | 50.8 | 33% | 1.85 |
| 6 | SNARE | 51.0 | 43% | 1.80 |
| 7 | ARLES | 51.5 | 35% | 1.83 |
| 8 | CRATE | 52.2 | 43% | 1.77 |
| 9 | ALERT | 52.9 | 32% | 1.85 |
| 10 | TRACE | 52.9 | 43% | 1.77 |
| 11 | LASER | 53.0 | 33% | 1.83 |
| 12 | ALTER | 53.1 | 31% | 1.85 |
| 13 | LEARN | 54.3 | 35% | 1.80 |
| 14 | SLATE | 54.3 | 46% | 1.73 |
| 15 | LITRE | 55.8 | 39% | 1.71 |
| 16 | CRANE | 56.0 | 44% | 1.72 |
| 17 | REACT | 56.4 | 38% | 1.77 |
| 18 | ASTER | 56.7 | 26% | 1.85 |
| 19 | CATER | 56.9 | 37% | 1.77 |
| 20 | ROAST | 57.2 | 40% | 1.69 |
| 21 | LEAST | 57.3 | 38% | 1.73 |
| 22 | TRAIL | 57.4 | 36% | 1.67 |
| 23 | STALE | 57.5 | 42% | 1.73 |
| 24 | ORIEL | 57.7 | 37% | 1.71 |
| 25 | TRADE | 57.8 | 40% | 1.73 |
"Answers left" is the expected number of likely answers still possible after that one guess. Lower is better.
Best second words
A good second guess is not just "five new letters": it is the word that, combined with your first, splits the answers into the most groups. Here is the best follow-up for each of the top five starters.
| First guess | Best second guess | Answers left after both (avg) |
|---|---|---|
| RAISE | TONAL | 4.6 |
| ARISE | TALON | 4.7 |
| STARE | LINER | 7.0 |
| CARTE | SALON | 5.4 |
| LATER | NOISE | 4.7 |
How the ranking works
The answer pool
Wordle's answers are hand-picked common words, so we did not test against every five-letter word. As the pool of likely answers we used five-letter dictionary headwords that appear at least 2,000 times in English Wikipedia, leaving out plurals and past tenses because Wordle rarely uses them. That gives 1,815 words; see our methodology for the sources.
Scoring a first guess
For each candidate opener, we worked out the exact colours it would show against every answer in the pool, using Wordle's rules for repeated letters: greens first, then yellows from left to right, each answer letter used once. Answers that would show the same colours fall into the same group. If you play that opener, the answer is in exactly one group, and that group is what you have left. The expected number of answers left is the average size of the group you land in, weighted by how likely you are to land there. That number is what the ranking sorts by. Lower is better.
We shortlisted the 250 common words with five different letters that cover the most frequent letters, then scored all of them exactly. The table also shows how often each opener finds at least one green and how many letters (green or yellow) it finds on average.
Scoring a second guess
The second-word table repeats the calculation for pairs. A pair's groups are formed by both rows of colours together, so the best partner is not always the word with five new letters. It is the word whose colours split the first word's groups most evenly.
Why these words work
Vowels matter, but not equally. In the answer pool, A appears in 43%, E appears in 46%, I appears in 29%, O appears in 30%, U appears in 17% of words. The strongest openers pair two vowels with frequent consonants such as R, S, T, L and N, in the spots where those letters usually sit. That is why vowel-heavy words do worse than you might expect: ADIEU leaves about 101 answers on average, and 247 of the 250 words we scored beat it. Low-coverage words are far worse: FUZZY leaves about 769, PUPPY leaves about 719, MUMMY leaves about 719.
Limits
Our answer pool is not the official Wordle answer list, and our dictionary is the public-domain ENABLE list (172,823 words), so the exact numbers differ slightly from other analyses. The leaders are built from the same high-value letters either way. A great opener also only matters on turn one: from guess two on, use your real colours in the Wordle solver to see what is left.
Frequently asked questions
What is the single best word to start Wordle?
In our test it is RAISE, which leaves about 43.5 of 1,815 likely answers on average. ARISE (46.5) and STARE (50.6) are close behind, so any of the three is a fine habit.
Is ADIEU a good starting word?
It finds vowels, but vowels alone do not narrow the list much. ADIEU leaves about 101 answers on average, against 43 for RAISE.
Should I use the same starting word every day?
Using one strong opener every day is a sound habit: you learn what its colour patterns usually mean. Switching between the top few words costs very little, because their averages are close.
What should my second word be?
If your first word found little, play the partner from the second-word table, for example TONAL after RAISE. If it found two or more letters, enter the colours in the Wordle solver and pick from the words that still fit.
Do these work for Quordle and Octordle?
Yes. Those games use the same five-letter words and colours, and a good opener helps every board at once. Use the Quordle solver or Octordle solver to track the boards.