ranked against all 1,826 real Wordle answers
Most "best starting word" lists are computed against a generic dictionary. This one is different: every word below is scored against every real Wordle answer ever played — the same archive behind our complete past-answers list, updated daily.
Our pick · Best all-round starter
STARE hits an average of 1.79 letters per real answer and lands more greens (0.60 per game) than any other top-tier coverage word that has actually been a Wordle answer. Balanced, memorable, and it never wastes a guess.
| # | Word | Avg. letters hit | Avg. greens | 2+ letters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ROATE † | 1.84 | 0.57 | 65% |
| 2 | ORATE † | 1.84 | 0.54 | 65% |
| 3 | LATER | 1.81 | 0.43 | 63% |
| 4 | ALTER | 1.81 | 0.41 | 63% |
| 5 | ALERT | 1.81 | 0.41 | 63% |
| 6 | IRATE | 1.81 | 0.54 | 64% |
| 7 | SOARE † | 1.79 | 0.69 | 64% |
| 8 | AROSE † | 1.79 | 0.56 | 64% |
| 9 | STARE | 1.79 | 0.60 | 62% |
| 10 | TEARS † | 1.79 | 0.40 | 62% |
| 11 | RATES † | 1.79 | 0.36 | 62% |
| 12 | LASER | 1.77 | 0.41 | 61% |
† Valid guess, but has never been a Wordle answer itself. Avg. letters hit = average number of the word's letters that appear in a real answer (green or yellow). Avg. greens = average exact-position matches. 2+ letters = share of all real answers where the word hits at least two letters.
SLATE — WordleBot's longtime favorite — comes in at #24 (1.70 letters, but an excellent 0.64 greens). CRANE, the pick made famous by 3Blue1Brown's information-theory video, ranks #46 (1.67 letters, 0.62 greens). Both remain great openers: they trade a little coverage for green-heavy positioning.
And the myth: ADIEU ranks #217, hitting just 1.51 letters per answer — and AUDIO is way down at #613 (1.34). Stacking vowels feels productive, but vowels are cheap information: E and A appear in nearly half of all answers anyway. It's the common consonants — R, T, L, S — that actually narrow the field.
Two things change the best play: how strict your game is, and whether today's answer has been used before. Here's the pick for each.
Hard mode vs. free play
You can fire two openers back-to-back and ignore the first word's colors — which unlocks the two-word opening below. Bank ten letters, then start solving. LATER → SONIC.
Every guess must reuse your greens and yellows, so a throwaway second word is illegal. Lead with one green-heavy opener that pins letters and keeps the most legal follow-ups open. SOARE (0.69 greens) or STARE. Coverage-only words like ROATE can strand you with few valid guesses.
Your starter: a used word vs. an unused one
STARE, LATER and ALERT have all been answers, so they can't win today — but the one-guess win is a long shot from any word. What a proven repeat gives you instead is the best, most consistent coverage across the whole field: the highest-value play if you just want to win in as few guesses as possible. You give up almost nothing, because the odds you'd have hit it in one were tiny to begin with.
Only a word that has never been an answer can score the magical one-guess win. That's the whole reason to open with an unused word like ROATE, SOARE or SANER instead of a proven repeat.
And you tune one differently: don't score its letters against past answers — score each one by how often it lands in that exact slot among the answers still unused. That's what builds SANER: S, A and E each top their column, and even N and R are chosen for the unused pool rather than raw coverage — the full position-by-position breakdown is under the table below.
The catch: this edge has an expiry date. Every day the unused pool shrinks, so both the odds of a one-guess win and an unused word's positional advantage slowly fade — in time the move becomes "avoid anything used in the last few years," not "anything unused at all." Whichever you pick, our homepage flags — spoiler-free — whether today's answer has been used before.
Prefer to bank information with two fixed openers? The strongest measured pair is LATER → SONIC:
Together they cover an average of 3.08 letters per real answer; 99.3% of all answers contain at least one of their ten letters, and three in four contain three or more. Close runners-up: ALERT + SONIC, LASER + TONIC, LEARN + STOIC, and SLATE + RHINO.
Share of all real answers containing each letter:
At the other end: J (1.2%), Q (1.5%), Z (1.6%) and X (1.8%) barely exist. Never burn an opener on them. More of these numbers — repeated letters, vowel patterns, word families — on the stats & facts page.
| Position | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st letter | S 15% | C 9% | B 8% |
| 2nd letter | A 13% | O 13% | R 12% |
| 3rd letter | A 15% | O 11% | I 11% |
| 4th letter | E 13% | N 8% | I 8% |
| 5th letter | E 20% | Y 14% | T 11% |
This is why SOARE lands so many greens: S-1, A-3 and E-5 are all top slots. One in five answers ends in E, and Y — weak overall — is the second-best final letter thanks to words like DODGY and PARTY.
SANER, position by position: S is the most common opener, A the most common 2nd letter, E the most common 4th — the three column leaders you see above — plus N as the 6th-most-common 3rd letter and R the 3rd-most-common 5th. Three of its five letters top their slot outright. STARE, by the same yardstick, ranks 1st, 11th, 2nd, 9th and 2nd — only its S leads a column. The reconciliation: this table ranks every past answer, which is why N and R fall outside its top three; SANER is scored against the answers still unused, where a 3rd-position N and a final R rank higher — and where a never-played word keeps its shot at the one-guess win. Those unused-pool figures are computed separately from the all-answers percentages shown in the table above.
Every candidate word was scored against the complete archive of real Wordle answers (1,826 answers through July 2026 — see the full list). For each answer we count how many of the starter's distinct letters appear in it (a green or yellow in an actual game) and how many sit in the exact right position (greens). Rankings use average letters hit, with greens as the tiebreaker. As new answers are played daily, the numbers drift very slowly; the top tier has been stable for years.
A great opener is habit one of six — the rest are in our data-backed strategy guide. And if you're playing today's puzzle right now, get spoiler-free hints — clues revealed one at a time, answer only if you ask.
STARE is our pick for best all-round starter: 1.79 letters hit per real answer with an excellent 0.60 greens. ROATE and ORATE score marginally higher on coverage but are obscure words that have never been Wordle answers.
No — ADIEU ranks around #217 against real answers (1.51 letters hit). Common consonants like R, T, S and L narrow the field faster than a fourth vowel does.
The word doesn't, but the plan does. Hard mode forbids a free second opener, so drop the two-word combo and lead with one green-heavy word like SOARE or STARE that locks letters in place and leaves the most legal follow-up guesses.
LATER → SONIC: 3.08 letters covered per answer on average, and 99.3% of all real Wordle answers contain at least one of their ten letters.
Only if you're chasing the one-guess win — since an answer almost never repeats, a used word can't win today. To hunt it, open with an unused word like ROATE, SOARE or SANER, ideally one whose letters are common in the positions the still-unused answers use. The edge fades as the unused pool shrinks. If you only care about winning in few guesses, a proven word like STARE has better average coverage.
Slightly. These rankings are recomputed against the growing archive of real answers — one new word per day — but the percentages move very slowly and the top tier has been stable for years. Check whether any word has already been used on our past Wordle answers list.