Best Wordle Tips and Tricks: Everything I Learned from Playing for Nearly Three Years

It’s been almost three years since WordleSoftware developer Josh Wardle made the game public in October 2021 and The New York Times bought it for as much as seven figures in January 2022. I don’t think I’ve started a day without it since then. Or ended a day, I should say… the Times posts a new puzzle at midnight and that’s usually when I’m awake. Solving Wordle is one of the last things I do before I go to sleep.

I don’t worry about streaks — if I go all out on my last guess and miss, eh, who cares? And I don’t like sharing my results. I’m never interested in how long it took someone else to get the answer, and I assume they’re just as uninterested in me.

But I’m interested in tips and tricks and the best starting words to solve the puzzle. I think it’s okay to change your strategy as you go — and I know that the more I’ve played, the more my strategy has honed. Here’s what I’ve learned from my years of near-obsessive Wordleing.

1. Opening words are so important

You can start guessing with any word, but mentally I need a good solid word to start strong. With some help from the Oxford English Dictionary I have made a list of all the letters in the alphabet, ordered by how often they are used.

I used ADIEU, the most basic starter word, because I liked having so many vowels. But after a year of playing, I decided that I like mixing up popular consonants. My favorite starter word is TRAIN, which gives me a bunch of the most common consonants, plus two vowels. I usually go to CLOSE and then BUMPY. But sometimes TRAIN gives me so many letters that I immediately start guessing with a word that seems to fit the pattern.

Readers sent me some of their favorite combos, which I keep in my back pocket for when I want to switch things up. Interestingly, two of their opening words begin with “TR,” just like my standby, TRAIN.

Follow the TREND

From Randy: “TREND is always the first word. If there is no E, then GHOUL. If there is an E, I go to JAMBS. The last word is PICKY.”

Later, Randy changed things up a bit: “I really like TREND, FLASH, GUMBO and PICKY. Like in ‘Wheel of Fortune,’ RSTINE is in TREND and FLASH. Four words, all the letters except QWZXVJ.”

Stay on the PATH

Jeff was on a 206 game winning streak when he brought in his top three starters, originally TRAIL, CONES and DUMPY.

He later changed CONES to SCONE, noting that in Wordle, “S” almost never appears at the end of a word, since the NYT editors publicly said they would not use regular plurals (meaning the word would never be a simple plural, like FOXES or SPOTS, words that simply add an S or ES to a singular word. But it could be a plural that is more complex, like GEESE).

Get RUSTY

Rusty indicated that he had success with his first name as the first word.

“The first three have to be RUSTY, PLACE, BOING or BOINK,” he said. “That last word depends on whether there’s already a C or an L that’s matched.”

ROAST BEAST

And my best friend, Lisa, a dedicated Wordle player, is doing really well these days with ROAST as her starter word. Sometimes, to mix it up, she starts with BEAST.

2. Remember that letters can be used more than once

I’ve been guilty of thinking that Wordle words don’t repeat letters. That’s just plain wrong — they do. Just because the puzzle tells me there’s an E in the last space, for example, doesn’t mean there can’t be an E somewhere else. I used to get stuck on the idea of ​​not retrying letters once they’d been identified as part of the word. I try not to think that way anymore.

3. Some words start with vowels

This is probably a big DUH to most of you, but I’m stuck on the idea that a word has to start with a consonant. That’s a big mistake on my part — and ERROR would actually be a good guess to start with a vowel, especially if I already had an R but didn’t know where it was. I also sometimes fall into the trap of guessing “consonant, vowel,” when a lot of words actually start with two consonants — BR, WH, those kinds of combinations.

4. Don’t forget Y

Remember that old vowel rule, “sometimes Y.” Y can act as a vowel, so when you’re frustrated because AEIO and U don’t show up, think of Y. The word could be NYMPH or CRYPT or any of a number of other options. Or maybe Y isn’t the only vowel, but its location is confusing. I like to get BUMPY into the guessing rotation to see if the word ends in it.

5. Test your guesses

The most useful thing for me, after a good starting word or two, is to use the grid itself. I like to type possibilities into the Wordle grid with an “X” if I don’t know the letter. Maybe I know the word ends in “ER” and somewhere in there is a D. So I might type DXXER and try to figure it out from there. (DIVER?) If I don’t see anything, I’ll type again with the D in a different place. And I try to remember that there can be more than one D, E, or R.

I choose an X because I like to type it directly into the Wordle grid, and X looks most like a blank to me. Because these attempts aren’t actually words, there’s no danger of accidentally hitting enter and wasting a guess.

6. Give yourself time

My final lesson after years of Wordle? Give yourself time. This game has no ticking clock. If I wake up at midnight and I’ve guessed three times and I can’t remember, I turn off my light and sleep on it. Sometimes all I have to do in the morning is look at it with fresh eyes and I’ll see the answer.

And if you don’t consider online help as cheating, you can try a site like this one Crossword Solver, where you say you’re looking for a five letter word, and then type in the letters you do have. This only really helps if you know where at least two letters are, but if you have good starters, it can often work.