Every Wordle addict knows that the choice of the initial word is vital. Choosing the right one can make the difference between solving the daily puzzle with two guesses (joy!) or needing five or six (boo!); It could even lead to a losing streak, and no one wants to experience that.
Well, now the official advice on which is the best Wordle seed word has changed, with WordleBot, the New York Times' dedicated AI help tool, stating that it prefers TRACE to its previous top pick, SLATE. Meanwhile, in hard mode, the robot's favorite word is now TROPE.
As the NYT states in a post on its Upshot site, “As always, the difference between these initial words (or, indeed, between these words and the bot's other favorites, CRATE, CARTE, CRANE, and SLANT) is extremely small. “How small? On average, the robot expects to solve a Wordle with 0.0006 fewer guesses on average when starting with TRACE instead of SLATE.”
So this is not a big deal by any means. For starters, both words are still very good options, and in fact, the NYT adds that if you played SLATE instead of TRACE every day for four and a half years, you would only save one guess in total, and that's on about 1,600 Wordles .
The article also notes that anyone starting with ADIEU (the most popular initial word) would need 74 additional turns over the course of a year. This should come as no surprise to anyone who reads my daily Wordle Answers column, where I regularly point out that ADIEU and its close cousin AUDIO are not good options. In fact, I also talked about it in my article about what I learned from achieving a 500-day streak in Wordle.
The reason for the change is that the creators of WordleBot added several new words to its lexicography (including BARRE, MOREL, and MERCH) and removed others (such as PWNED, EGADS, and YEESH). But none of this affects the actual game, because WordleBot has a completely different dictionary than Wordle itself and doesn't know what the real answers are. I guess none of those six words are on the list.
Interesting stuff, then, but none of this will affect me, because after using the same seed word for about 700 Wordles, I've changed my strategy.
A new way to play Wordle
I started playing Wordle in December 2021 and have now completed 741 games with a current streak of 740. For almost all of that time I have used STARE as a starting word. I chose it before the web was flooded with a lot of online analysis of the best word openers, and before WordleBot existed, but I chose wisely: STARE is WordleBot's 14th favorite opener and has a skill rating of 97 /99.
I found STARE very useful in all of those games for two reasons. First of all, it is a good Wordle that uses very common letters. This is obvious. S is the most common starting letter in the game, A is the most common middle letter, and E is the most common ending letter. All five letters are in the top 10 overall. It's a simple matter of probability.
The other thing is that playing a consistent seed word made it much easier for me to know what to do on my second guess. If I drew a blank, I would play CLOUD or COULD, because I knew from experience that they would give me the best results. If I got a green A, I would play CLING. A green E would be followed by LINGO. The net effect was that I consistently got 3/6 even on days when the average of all players was above 4, although, like everyone, I still struggled on Wordle's toughest days.
The downside to all this was that playing Wordle got a little…boring. December was a ridiculously easy period for the game (only two of the 31 puzzles had an average score above 4.0) and solving Wordle each day became easy. No, worse than that; became mundane. Write STARE, write a second good word, solve for three. Yawn.
Goodbye STARE, hello… AFOUL?
This was all my fault, of course, so I decided to do something about it. Since January 1st I started choosing a new starting word at random, and this has completely revolutionized the game for me.
The words I've started with so far include the good (PIOGUO, UNITY), the bad (APNEA, CHAFF, BLOOM) and the ugly (POPPIES). Seriously, POPPY? It only contains three different letters!
However, the specific word didn't necessarily match my score, because it opened up so many more possibilities for me to shape the puzzle through good or bad decisions. In recent days the bad decisions have been more evident than the good ones, but I'm not complaining about that, because either way it has made it more interesting.
Of course, luck still plays a huge role. The day my random word was POPPY, the answer was STONE, so I already had a yellow O and a green Y to take into account, and I still got a 3/6. When I got FAIL (not a terrible word by any means, but definitely rare), the answer was FINAL, meaning I already had three of the five letters and was able to score a two.
The main takeaway has been that my scores are not as consistent now. So far in 2024, I have had three 5s and a 6, but also two 2s and four 3s. It has become a real roller coaster.
Again, this is a good thing. Using chance has reinvigorated my love for Wordle, which is no easy task after two years and 741 games. So follow WordleBot's lead and play TRACE every day, but you might have more fun if you choose at random.
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