Wordle is the word-guessing game that’s taking over the world. The game first appeared in October 2021, and by January 2022, it reached 300,000 players. It has become so popular that the New York Times just purchased Wordle from its creator, Josh Wardle, for a price in the “low seven figures.”
The aim of Wordle is to guess a mystery five-letter word, known as the “wordle” in six tries. After each guess, the colour of the tiles will change to reflect how close your guess was to the word. Some players have discovered how to play more than one game per day, while others are deciphering social media posts for the answer. As for the best way to play, there are many theories out there that claim to be the most effective.
However, a PhD student appears to have discovered the perfect first word to guess in Wordle with the help of a program that he wrote himself. Zeb, who goes by @tokbyzeb on TikTok, shared his creation on the platform, where he explained that his program finds the word that minimises the average number of possible words left after guessing the first word.
“The best possible first word in Wordle is ‘roate,’ which I’ve never heard of before,” he said. “If you guess that as your first word, you go from 2,000 possible answers down to only 60.”
Many commenters were impressed by Zeb’s TikTok, which now has more than 840,000 views, and thanked him for writing the simple yet effective program.
“Exactly!” said a user named Louie. “You don’t want the highest likelihood of choosing one correct letter. You want the highest likelihood of eliminating future guesses.”
Another TikToker said, “Omg! Yes! I’ve been saying you need a word that not only has common letters but minimises what’s left.”
Some commenters were still unsure how Zeb’s program worked, so he provided a video with further explanation.
“A natural question to ask is: ‘What’s the best second word to choose?” Zeb said in a response video. Then, he reran the program with commenters’ suggestions in mind and discovered the best two words to guess in Wordle. “In my opinion, from this program,” Zeb said, “I think that the best two word combination is ‘roate’ and then ‘linds,’ which gets you to about five words left.”
There you have it! Or, you can just guess the first word that pops up in your brain. That’s always fun too.
