Scientist Uses Math to Figure Out Best Wordle Starting Word (2024)

Wordle has become quite the worldwide sensation, with the Internet seemingly obsessed with solving its daily word puzzles where they're tasked with figuring out a five-letter word in six guesses. When it comes to Wordle, having a strong starting word is important for success, and so a lot of the discussion has revolved around which words people use to start their daily Wordle game.

Scientist Andrew Steele is the latest to offer their opinion on the best starting word in Wordle, using math to come to their conclusion. Steele recently uploaded a video to his YouTube channel where he argues that Wordle is actually a mathematical puzzle instead of a word one. Steele explained how Wordle is about fact-finding, with players needing to use their guesses to figure out as much about the answer as possible.

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Steele then pointed out the different Wordle strategies that players use to try to be successful at the game, like how many try to figure out the vowels first by making guesses like "ADIEU" and "AUDIO." Others will try to guess words that use some of the most common letters in the English language, like "STONE," for example.

Steele goes into a lot more detail in the video, but his ultimate conclusion is that the best starting word in Wordle is "TRACE." According to Steele's results, TRACE can help players solve any given Wordle puzzle in an average of 3.62 turns. So anyone that is struggling with solving the daily Wordle puzzle in six turns may want to consider using "TRACE" as their first guess in the game moving forward.

Steele is not the first person to try to use their expertise to figure out the best Wordle starting word. Others have also thrown their hat in the ring, with linguist and TikTok user linguisticdiscovery claiming that the best word to start with is "IRATE." This was disputed by computer scientist and fellow TikTok user crvlwalnek, who claimed that the best Wordle starting word was actually "LATER."

Ultimately, any of these words are likely strong candidates for Wordle players to use out of the gate. And really they can use whatever words they want, and they will stand a decent shot at solving any given puzzle. There are times that players might feel tricked, though, and fail as a result, like the Wordle from February 9 that used the word "HUMOR" despite those in the UK being used to spelling it like "HUMOUR" instead.

Wordle is available now.

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