Every Wordle lover understands the importance of choosing the right starting word. If you pick a wrong start word, you’ll need more steps to solve the day’s puzzle or even lose a streak, which is something any Wordler wants to avoid.
Many Wordle enthusiasts prefer changing their starting word occasionally to keep things interesting. It can be boring to always start your guess with “AUDIO” or “ADIEU”.
Interestingly, the Wordlebot always starts with the same word, and it usually works out. Knowing some of the best Wordle starting words is, therefore, a strategy that shouldn’t be overlooked because it works.
What is WordleBot?
WordleBot is a tool developed by The New York Times to analyze and improve your Wordle game performance. It evaluates your completed puzzles, provides feedback on your skill and luck, and suggests alternative moves to solve the puzzle in fewer steps. This allows you to analyze how you could approach the completed Wordle game differently by assessing your skills and strategies versus the average NYT game solver.
Knowing WordleBot’s starting words is important because they are optimized to maximize performance in the game. WordleBot analyzes millions of games played over a year and takes into account changes in the Wordle database, such as added or removed words, to provide the most effective starting words.
WordleBot Starting Words
Since January 2024, WordleBot has consistently chosen SLATE, TRACE, and CRATE as its preferred starting words in regular mode, and LEAST and DEALT in hard mode. If you plan to follow WordleBot’s preferences, these are the words you should consider.
Other Wordlebot Starting Words
Here are the top WordleBot words based on score, which ranges between 1 and 100, where 100 is the best word possible.
Standard Mode
- CARTE (99)
- CRATE (99)
- CRANE (99)
- SLATE (99)
- TRACE (99)
- SLANT (99)
- CRANE (98)
- LEAST (98)
- CARET (98)
- STALE (98)
- LANCE (98)
- TRICE (98)
- ROAST (97)
Hard Mode
- DEALT (99)
- TRIPE (95)
- TAILS (94)
- SHALT (94)
- SLANT (93)
- PETAL (93)
- SLATE (93)
- TALES (93)
- TRACE (93)
- PLANE (93)
Other Best Starting Words
I know there are many Wordle starting words recommended by experts and enthusiasts. You might be wondering which ones you should use. Well, all those recommended starting words are still excellent options. You can start with any of them as long as it helps you solve the puzzle in fewer steps.
According to The New York Times, the difference in outcomes of the starting letters is almost negligible. Here’s their explanation of how small a difference it makes over time:
On average, the bot expects to solve a Wordle in 0.0006 fewer guesses on average when it starts with TRACE rather than SLATE. If you play Wordle every day, it would take you over four and a half years to save one guess by opening with TRACE instead of SLATE. By comparison, ADIEU — the most common starting word among Wordle players — trails TRACE by about a fifth of a guess, adding up to 74 extra turns for the bot over the course of a year.