Although Wordle is rather simplistic, recognizing good strategies can take away some of the guesswork, and the first Wordle combination can be used to great effect. A lot of the strategy for Wordle's puzzles lies in simply finding a few letters that are used in the correct answer. Effectively combining the first two guesses can lead to word combinations that greatly reduce the potential letters and weed out some of the more commonly used ones.
Though it may seem like the first guess is nothing more than a crapshoot to get started, some combinations make for better words to start Wordle games with. Without putting too much thought into it, a good starting place is to eliminate some vowels. Compared to consonants, it's easy to get a large variety of vowels on the board in one or two Wordle guesses with words like "adieu," but focusing solely on vowels won't necessarily move the game forward when there are so many consonants that could be involved. Instead, players will want to use their first two guesses on word combinations that combine to test the five vowels (or sometimes six) alongside some of the more common consonants.
Wordle's First Two Words Can Be A Powerful Combo
The strategy for early guesses in Wordle can be gleaned from Scrabble's lowest-scoring, and thus most used, letters - A, E, I, O, U, L, N, S, T, and R. Add in the two (D and G) and three (B, C, M, and P) scorers, and there are plenty of words that can be combined to whittle down the possibilities. Even though correct answers can use a letter twice in Wordle, players won't want to double up in their first couple of guesses, because they're trying to test as many letters as possible. With the above letters, words like "raise" can be followed with "donut" to immediately find some of the more common letters that might be part of the answer. Some good Wordle combinations might be:
- RAISE and DONUT
- ROATE and SLING
- SOUND and CRAMP
There's no perfect strategy to explain how to play the viral word game, though, since the second move is almost always dependent on the first. Playing "raise" might reveal that A, I, and R are all somewhere within the answer, making "donut" a very ineffective second guess. Because of the game's rules, and how the player progresses through guesses, there's no absolute best second Wordle word. Any combination of words used to test the above letters should result in roughly the same outcome after the first two guesses, but players should always try to take into their first Wordle guess if it turned some boxes yellow or green.
Other Wordle Second Word Combinations
Because of how Wordle works, players already know both the list of words Wordle hasn't used yet and also all the words Wordle has used so far. This means there are a finite amount of starting words which could possibly result in a correct 1/6 Wordle guess, and everyone should always strive to pick their first and second Wordle combinations from this list. This ensures that they are not inputting answers Wordle has accepted already, and will always be a better choice than using old Wordle answers. Other good possible starting word combinations in Wordle, as of this writing, are:
- SOUTH and MADLY
- LITHE and SONAR
- TORUS and BATCH
Players interested in digging more into the theory behind the best Wordle second words and Wordle combinations should watch the video below from Andrew Steele, which breaks down the mathematical theory behind Wordle word choices.
