If you have been playing Wordle, then you’ve probably tried different strategies to crack the code.
Wordle, the free, wildly popular online game, requires players to guess a five-letter word in six tries, once a day. It’s safe to say that a lot rides on the first guess. Here are some strategies to elevate your play.
A numbers game
YouTuber Grant Sanderson created an algorithm that is capable of playing Wordle and determined that there are 13,000 possible answers, per Polygon. Using words like “slice,” “tried” and “crane” can reduce the number of possible words substantially.
It’s all about vowels
Almost every word has a vowel, so if your first word is filled with three or more, it can make the guessing game easier, according to Woman’s Day.
Words like “adieu,” “about,” “aisle” and “ocean” are some great examples.
Other commonly used letters
Google’s director of research Peter Norvig analyzed data from Google Books to create a list of most commonly used letters in English. Here are the top 10:
- E.
- T.
- A.
- O.
- I.
- N.
- S.
- R.
- H.
- L.
The best words out of these top 10 letters are “later,” “alter,” “alert,” “arose,” “irate,” “resin” and “notes.”
Things to remember
Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, created this came for his partner who loved word games. The game doesn’t send you notifications to come back to it. Per The New York Times, Wordle doesn’t want an intense relationship.
- “It’s something that encourages you to spend three minutes a day,” he said. “And that’s it. Like, it doesn’t want any more of your time than that.”