Wordle Starting Words Explained (and the Best Second Guess)

Ask ten Wordle players for their opening word and you will hear ten confident answers. This guide explains the logic behind a good opener in plain terms, then answers the question most guides skip: once you have picked a first word, what should your second guess be?

All the figures below were calculated against Wordle's original list of 2,315 possible answers, using the same colour rules the game uses (including repeated letters). If you want the headline rankings of single openers, our data-driven Wordle strategy article and the best Wordle starting words page cover them. Here we focus on why those words win and how to follow them up.

What "a good first guess" actually means

Every guess turns the hidden word into a pattern of green, yellow and grey tiles. Before you guess, any of the 2,315 answers is possible. After you guess, only the answers that would have produced the exact pattern you saw are still in play.

So the quality of an opener is not about how often it is right (almost never) or how many yellows it gives you. It is about how evenly it divides the answer list. Imagine sorting all 2,315 answers into buckets, one bucket per colour pattern your guess could show. A strong opener creates lots of buckets and keeps them small. A weak one dumps hundreds of answers into a few big buckets, and when your answer lands in one of those, you have learned very little.

The number we use is the expected number of answers left: on average, how big is the bucket you end up in? It rewards exactly the right thing, because a huge bucket is both more likely to be hit and more painful when it is.

Two things stand out. First, the top of the table is crowded: anything under about 75 is a perfectly good opener, and the difference between RAISE and CRANE is roughly one extra guess every few dozen games. Second, ADIEU and AUDIO are far behind, even though they reveal four vowels.

Why four vowels is a trap

Vowel-heavy openers feel efficient because they answer the question "which vowels are in it?" But nearly every five-letter word has an A, E, I, O or U, so that question splits the list badly. Knowing that the answer contains an A and an E does not tell you much when hundreds of answers do.

Consonants carry more information because they are less evenly spread. Whether the answer contains an R, S, T, L or N divides the list far more usefully. That is why the best openers mix two or three of the most common vowels with two or three of the most common consonants: R, S, T, L and N between them appear in a large share of answers, and they also tend to sit in predictable positions.

Position is the hidden half of the story

A yellow tile tells you a letter is somewhere in the word. A green tile tells you exactly where. Greens shrink the list much faster, so an opener earns extra credit for placing letters where they usually live.

S is the clearest example. It is the most common first letter on the answer list (366 answers start with S), yet only 36 answers end in S, and those are words like GLASS, FOCUS and BONUS rather than plurals. An opener with S in the last position therefore wastes some of its power. E is the opposite: 424 answers end in E, more than any other letter, which is one reason so many strong openers end in E. When you build your own opener, think about where each letter usually appears, not just whether it is common.

Choosing your second word

Most players pick their second guess on the fly, based on the colours they just saw. That is the best approach when the first guess gives you something to work with. But many players also like a fixed "second opener": a word with five completely new letters that they play no matter what, to map out ten letters before they start solving.

If you play this way, the pairing matters. We tested every allowed word with five letters that do not repeat any letter of the opener, and measured how many answers remain on average after both guesses. Here are the best follow-ups that are themselves on the answer list (so they could also win outright):

If you do not mind an obscure second word, CRANE followed by TOILS is the strongest pair we found, at 4.44 answers left on average. After those two guesses, 623 of the 2,315 answers are already pinned down to a single possibility.

Why some pairs work better than others

Look at what the good pairs have in common. SLATE and MINOR together cover A, E, I and O plus S, L, T, M, N and R: four vowels, six of the most useful consonants, and no wasted repeats. ADIEU and SNORT cover the same number of letters, but ADIEU spends four of its five slots on vowels and gets little positional information in return.

The second word also needs to be good at splitting whatever the first word left behind. That is why CRANE pairs best with words containing I, O, L and T: those are exactly the common letters CRANE did not test.

Hard mode changes the picture

In hard mode, every green must stay in place and every yellow must be reused. You cannot play a fixed second word with five new letters unless your first guess came back entirely grey. The opener matters even more here, because you will be forced to build on whatever it reveals. Words like RAISE, IRATE and SLATE remain good choices, but you should expect to think harder on guess two rather than relying on a script.

A simple routine that works

1. Pick one strong opener and stick with it. RAISE, ARISE, IRATE, STARE, SLATE, TRACE or CRANE are all excellent. Consistency helps you read the colours faster.
2. If guess one gives you little or nothing, play your fixed partner word (MINOR, PILOT, CLOUT and so on) to test five more letters.
3. If it gives you two or more useful tiles, start solving straight away and choose a guess that is still possible.
4. Remember doubles. 749 answers, about one in three, repeat a letter. When you are stuck, consider whether a letter appears twice.
5. When three or four candidates remain, pick the guess that tells them apart, even if it cannot be the answer.

If you want to check your reasoning mid-game, the Wordle solver shows every answer still consistent with your colours and ranks the next guess by how many answers it is expected to leave, the same measure used in this article. And if you just want the list, browse all five-letter words.

Summing up

A good opener is a word that divides the answer list into many small pieces. Lead with common letters in their usual positions, avoid spending your first guess on four vowels, and if you like a fixed second word, choose one that covers the gaps your opener left. Do that and most of your games will be decided by guess three, which leaves plenty of room for luck to work in your favour.