The Optimal Wordle Strategy

Unless you have been living under a rock, you would be familiar with the game Wordle. The highly addictive word game that combines hangman and mastermind has taken the internet by storm. In this article I will examine what the optimal strategy is for Wordle.

The two key facets in playing your early words are using common letters and putting these common letters in the positions that they are most likely to appear in the mystery word.

Within the Wordle game’s source code, there are 2,315 different possible words that can be the mystery word. This list can be found here.

There are also 12,972 words that the game will accept as your guess. This list can be found here.

Based on the solution list, for the first letter, the most likely appearances in order are: S, C, B, T, P, A, F, R and G

For the second letter: A, O, R, E, I, L, U and H

The third letter: A, I, O, E, U, N and L

The fourth letter: E, N, S, L, A, I and C

The fifth letter: E, Y, T, R, L, H, D, N and K     

A chart showing the distribution of letters in the words within the Wordle source code. For example, note that just over 17.5% of words in the Wordle source code contain E as the 5th letter. (Image source: https://nerdschalk.com/)

Firstly, the optimal strategy of Wordle depends on your objective. To claim there is a universal best initial Wordle word to play is false. The best first word in Wordle depends on your goal. Is it to guess the word in 3 guesses? Is it to avoid a worst case scenario? Do you want to play words that will have a higher chance of containing letters that are green? Do you want to reduce the word list to it’s lowest number of potential words?

Calculations from the Art of Problem Solving have shown that the five best first words (from best to 5^th best) based on the average number of words remaining in the Wordle pool are:

1. ROATE (60.4 average words remaining)

2. RAISE (61 average words remaining)

3. RAILE (61.3 average words remaining)

4. SOARE (62.3 average words remaining)

5. ARISE (63.7 average words remaining)

Using the same metric of the lowest average words remaining, on your second turn, after playing ROATE, the best word to play is LINDS. This will reduce the average words remaining down to 5.1.

The five best words (from best to 5^th best) if you want to avoid the worst case scenario of not guessing the Wordle word (this tactic may be good for the game Absurdle) are:

1. AESIR (168 maximum number of words remaining)

2. ARISE (168 maximum number of words remaining)

3. RAISE (168 maximum number of words remaining)

4. REAIS (168 maximum number of words remaining)

5. SERAI (168 maximum number of words remaining)

The five best words (from best to 5^th best) if you are hoping to guess words that have green letters showing up are:

1. SOOEY (0.55 average green letters)

2. SAREE (0.54 average green letters)

3. SOREE (0.54 average green letters)

4. SIREE (0.52 average green letters)

5. SEMEE (0.52 average green letters)

The five best words (from best to 5^th best) if you are going for a quick win are:

1. CHARE (After playing this word, there is a 15% chance of narrowing the word down to 10 options or less)

2. CRATE (After playing this word, there is a 14.5% chance of narrowing the word down to 10 options or less)

3. PEART (After playing this word, there is a 14.3% chance of narrowing the word down to 10 options or less)

4. SPEAT (After playing this word, there is a 14.3% chance of narrowing the word down to 10 options or less)

5. REAST (After playing this word, there is a 14.2% chance of narrowing the word down to 10 options or less)

The five best initial words and second words (from best to 5^th best) for guessing the word in 3 guesses are:

1. SOARE + CLINT (you will win on your third guess on average 47.8% of the time. After playing these two words, there will be an average of 4.37 possible answers remaining. The worst case scenario is 25 words remaining)

2. SAINT + CEORL (you will win on your third guess on average 46.8% of the time. After playing these two words, there will be an average of 4.42 possible answers remaining. The worst case scenario is 22 words remaining)

3. LOAST + CRINE (you will win on your third guess on average 46.7% of the time. After playing these two words, there will be an average of 4.38 possible answers remaining. The worst case scenario is 23 words remaining)

4. SOCLE + RIANT (you will win on your third guess on average 46.7% of the time. After playing these two words, there will be an average of 4.31 possible answers remaining. The worst case scenario is 25 words remaining)

5. SARIN + CLOTE (you will win on your third guess on average 46.3% of the time. After playing these two words, there will be an average of 4.38 possible answers remaining. The worst case scenario is 21 words remaining)

Even the above two word strategy list shows that there is no objective, clear best first two words to play in Wordle. By playing SOARE and CLINT you are playing the combination that gives you the best chance at guessing the word in three guesses however this combination will give more possible answers remaining (4.37) than SOCLE and RIANT (4.31) and it also has a worst case scenario of 25 words remaining compared to SARIN and CLOTE having 21 words remaining).

Due to the fact that playing SOARE followed by CLINT often leads to good outcomes, I will briefly focus on some follow ups from these words. The worst case scenario from playing SOARE followed by CLINT is to have a yellow A, R and E. If this is the case, then there are 25 words that could be the mystery word: AMBER, BAKER, BREAD, BREAK, DEBAR, DREAD, DREAM, EAGER, FREAK, GAMER, GAYER, GAZER, HAREM, MAKER, PAPER, PARER, PAYER, RARER, REBAR, REHAB, REPAY, WAFER, WAGER, WAVER and WREAK.

If you don’t get any yellow or green matches from SOARE followed by CLINT, there are 15 remaining possibilities: BUDDY, BUGGY, DUMMY, DUMPY, FUZZY, GUMMY, GUPPY, HUMPH, JUMPY, MUDDY, MUMMY, PUDGY, PUFFY, PUPPY, PYGMY.

If I can’t solve the puzzle in 3 guesses with SOARE + CLINT, my third word will be dependent on what letters are green and yellow. If the E is yellow then I may play FUMED. If the A and/or R is yellow, I may play BARMY. If I am lacking vowels, there is a good chance that the mystery word will end in Y so I may play BUMPY, DUMPY or PUDGY.

If you are using the metric focused of the size of the possible solution list after one guess then the optimal first word is ROATE. This word provides an average 3.49 guess solution.

When playing Wordle, it’s important to be adaptive. Don’t automatically play your predetermined second word immediately after your first word. Look at the yellow and green boxes and reassess your strategy. Sometimes after your first guess, you will have narrowed the word pool down significantly and it is worth working out which possible words remain by going through all of the combinations. You may have two green letters which is often enough to guess the word correctly on your second guess. Alternatively, there are other scenarios in which having two green letters leaves a wide word pool and aiming to solve the Wordle in two guesses won’t be a good strategy.

Another key thing to remember in Wordle is to be cognizant of words containing a letter that appears twice. You may be looking down at the Wordle keyboard, going through the options of each unused letter without considering that the mystery word may contain a double letter.

Be aware that the mystery word in Wordle is never a plural however the full word list does permit plural word guesses. You should also be constantly on the lookout for common letters that go together such as CH, SH, ST etc.

The creator of Wordle, Josh Wardle specifically selected a set of 2,315 five-letter words that could be the mystery Wordle word on any day. He chose these words because his wife was familiar with them. This means that the mystery word likely won’t be an obscure word that you have never heard of- nor is it likely to be a rarely used word. Use this to your advantage. If you have narrowed the word down to TRIAL and TAPIR, guess TRIAL first.

Partway through a Wordle, I like to type an X into the guess box with the X replacing the letters that I am trying to figure out (don’t press enter!) This helps me visualise the potential answer. For example I may have worked out _R_ _ K. In this instance I will write down XRXXK.

After playing a Wordle, I like to use this website: https://sadmoody.github.io/unwordle/ which informs you of the possible remaining words in any specific Wordle situation. Click on a letter once to turn it yellow and twice to turn it green. I may have thought that I had narrowed the Wordle down to 4 possible words only to realise that I overlooked 2 extra words that it could have been. This website essentially lets you see if you made any mistakes in the Wordle- hence you can learn from the mistakes.

Finally, like any task, in order to improve, it is important to practice playing Wordle. If, like me, you find that playing one game per 24 hours is inadequate, then I recommend playing unlimited games here: https://hellowordl.net/.

I have written another article about how to become the best Wordle player in the world. Read this here: https://puzzleaday.wordpress.com/2022/03/09/how-to-become-the-worlds-best-wordle-player/