Wordle hints, strategies, starter words, tips and tricks to help you win

I have already shared mine easy winning strategy for playing Wordlethe popular online game invented by Josh Wardle that runs daily on The New York Times site. Basically, I start with TRAIN and CLOSE, then look at all the correct letters and try a word that uses them in different places. When I have to think of possible winning words, I use X’s to spell out the correct letters that I know so far. So far, the strategy still works.

And now there’s a new tool you can use. I call it my Wordle player cheat sheet. With the help of the great minds at the Oxford English Dictionary, I’ve compiled a list of all the letters in the alphabet, arranged in the order they’re most commonly used in English words. So, as you might have guessed, E and A are great letters to throw into a Wordle cheat sheet. J and Q, not so much.

I also asked readers and friends to share their Wordle strategies. I hope you find some tips here to freshen up your gameplay.

Be a CHAMPION

“I used to use TRAIN as my first guess; now my first two words are always NOISE and TRULY. If the word is unclear, I use CHAMP next. Those three words give me the 15 most common letters, including all 6 vowels. If I’m still completely lost, I go with DEBUG, which gives me three more consonants.” —Dan Hughes

Use yesterday’s winner

“I always start with the winning word from the previous day. Continuity!” —Marc Hirsh

The random method

“For a long time I used two initial words that gave me a lot of vowels and common letters, which always made me a solid winner of four lines and sometimes three. But then I went further and just threw in random words. That still made me a solid winner of four lines, sometimes three, and a few twos.” —Susan C. Jong

Another vote for random

“I have almost no strategy. My wordle (and quordle) game is a random free for all. I get wordle in 4 guesses almost every time. I use the starting word that comes to mind. I use a second, random word to try to get more hits.” —Debe Ashe Hoover

Importance of A and R

“I also always type what I got right with an ‘X’ in the unfamiliar spot(s). Often a visual person like me can see the right answer right away. And if I got an ‘a’ and an ‘r’ wrong, I almost always move them to the 3rd and 4th spot so it (could spell) ‘are’ or ‘ard’, etc. That’s where they belong a large percentage of the time, if I don’t already have it right.” —Christine Eberhard Minor

Get those vowels

“My strategy is to start with AUDIO and focus on four vowels.” —Vanessa Bloy

Have we talked about vowels yet?

“ALOUD or OCEAN are my usual words.” —Juli Jansen Pelletier

‘Stare’ at the puzzle

“I stopped playing, but my opening word was always STARING.” —Scott Lerman

Use a ‘straw’

“(My opening word) is STRAW…”. —Stefan Myslicki