How to get better at Wordle, without cheating

Reframe the game: six guesses, one job

You are not trying to guess the word. You are trying to eliminate words. Every guess is a measurement, and the whole skill of the game is squeezing as much information as possible out of each of the six measurements you get.

Once you see it that way, a first guess that happens to be right is actually a slightly wasted first guess — you learned one thing, when you could have learned five.

What makes an opening word good

Three properties, in rough order of importance:

1. Common letters. You want the letters that appear in the most words.
2. Five different letters. Repeating a letter in the opener wastes a slot — you learn about one letter twice instead of two letters once.
3. A sensible vowel/consonant mix. Most answers contain two or three vowels, and knowing which ones is disproportionately useful.

In written English, the letters that show up most often are roughly E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H and L. So an opener like CRANE, SLATE, RAISE or STARE is doing broadly the right job: five distinct letters, mostly from the high-frequency end, with vowels in useful positions.

Players argue endlessly about which of these is optimal, and the honest answer is that the difference between them is a few percent. A good opener is worth improving; it is not worth obsessing over. The decisions from guess two onward matter several times more.

The mistake almost everyone makes on guess two

Suppose your opener was CRANE and you got a yellow R, a yellow A, and everything else grey. The instinct is to immediately try to place those letters: something like AROMA or RADAR. That is a mistake.

You already know R and A are in the word. Reusing them tells you nothing you did not know. What you still need is to learn about the other letters — and there is a whole row of five slots going unused.

The stronger move is a second guess built almost entirely from letters you have not tested yet: something like SHOUT or MISTY, depending on what came back grey. After two guesses you have tested ten distinct letters, and by the third guess you usually have enough constraints that the answer is nearly forced.

The exception: if your first guess came back with a lot of green and yellow and the word is already almost determined, go for it. Information gathering stops being worth more than winning the moment you are one plausible word away.

Read the yellows properly

A yellow tile gets two pieces of information, and most players only use one. Yes, the letter is in the word — but it is also not in that position. That negative fact is often the more useful half.

Two yellows in the same column across two guesses pin a letter down fast. If A was yellow in position 2 and also yellow in position 4, you have eliminated two of five slots for one letter.

Greys are information too, and this is where players slip up: a grey letter is not always absent. If you guessed a word with two Es and one E came back green or yellow while the other came back grey, the grey means "there is exactly one E" — not "no E."

Patterns worth knowing

English spelling is much more regular than it feels, and certain endings are common enough to be worth checking early:

• -IGHT — LIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT, MIGHT, FIGHT
• -OUND — SOUND, ROUND, BOUND, FOUND, POUND, GROUND is six letters, so no
• -ATCH — MATCH, CATCH, BATCH, HATCH, PATCH, LATCH
• -EACH — TEACH, PEACH, BEACH, REACH, PREACH
• SH-, CH-, TH-, WH- at the start — these consonant digraphs are everywhere

The trap here is undersampling: once you latch onto -IGHT you may burn two guesses on MIGHT and RIGHT when the answer was something else entirely. Use the patterns to generate candidates, not to commit.

Duplicate letters: when to suspect them

Duplicate letters are common enough that ignoring them is a mistake, but rare enough that assuming them is worse. The useful heuristic: if you have found four of five letters and nothing sensible fits, try doubling one of the letters you already have. Words like LEVEL, SENSE, ERROR and STILL defeat players who have quietly ruled out repeats.

A short checklist to run before you hit enter

• Am I reusing letters I already know are present? (Usually bad.)
• Have I used a position I already know is wrong for that letter? (Always bad.)
• Does my guess fit everything I know? A guess that violates a known constraint is a thrown-away row.
• How many possible words would this guess leave? Roughly, fewer is better — but only count words consistent with what you have seen.

Try it yourself

Unlimited rounds, so you can test an opening strategy over several games rather than waiting until tomorrow. Your streak is tracked as you go.

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Editorial note: This article is for general educational purposes. Cognitive effects vary between individuals, and claims about specific benefits should be based on evidence from well-designed studies.