Are you still a Wordle fanatic? Then you may have your favorite start words that you use every day. But, some start words are far better than others. The New York Times analyzed more than 515 million Wordle answers over the past year and a half, and discovered a number of trends, including the most popular Wordle start words, and which of those were the most — and least — efficient when it came to solving Wordle.
The most popular — but least efficient — Wordle start word
According to the The New York Times' analysis of 515 million Wordle games completed between Dec. 1, 2022, and Nov. 30, 2023., the most popular Wordle start word is ADIEU, with six percent of all players using it as their opening gambit. The next is STARE at 4.9%, SLATE at 3.9%, AUDIO at 3.6%, and RAISE at 3.1%.
However, it turns out that using ADIEU as an opening word is a mistake.
"On average, players who started with ADIEU needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with SLATE, adding up to 132 extra turns over the course of a year," reads the Times' story.
"Even worse: While 1.7 percent of SLATE starters failed to solve a Wordle on average, the chance of failure with ADIEU more than doubled, to 3.6 percent."
Maybe more people should check out our list of the best Wordle start words.
There are a lot of Wordle cheaters
Another interesting finding by The New York Times is that more players guess the correct answer on the first try — 1 in every 250 chances — which is far more than if they were to randomly guess the answer. Perhaps they've read our own today's Wordle answer story?
Other popular starting words
As the story notes, starting each Wordle game with the same starting word can get boring, no matter how efficient. Around almost every holiday, other words spike in popularity:
- Christmas Eve (Dec. 24, 2022): MERRY
- Christmas Day: MERRY, GIFTS, PEACE
- New Year’s Eve: PARTY, YEARS
- New Year’s Day (Jan. 1, 2023): YEARS, PARTY, HAPPY, FRESH
- The Super Bowl (Feb. 12): SUPER
- Valentine’s Day: HEART, LOVER, CUPID
- St. Patrick’s Day: LUCKY
- Easter: RISEN, BUNNY
- Coronation of Charles III and Camilla (May 6): CROWN, ROYAL
- Labor Day: LABOR
- Halloween: GHOST
- Thanksgiving: THANK, GRAVY, FEAST
Other findings
The New York Times' story has some more interesting info on other popular starting words, the toughest words to solve, as well as the most surprising words for the Wordlebot. It's worth checking out, especially if you play Wordle every day.
