A computer program revealed Wordle’s best and worst starting words, showcasing the optimal five-letter word to employ first every time. There are a number of known strategies to guessing the daily Wordle puzzle, from eliminating key consonants and vowels to identifying the location of specific letter combinations. Most players choose their starting words differently and many experts have chimed in with the best words to start Wordle games with. This has spurred quite the debate online, with many players claiming their chosen starting word is the most effective at solving the puzzle.

What seems to make Wordle so enticing is the accessibility of gameplay. With only six guesses, players have to identify the daily five-letter word from 12,478 different options in the English language. Each guess helps by eliminating letters or revealing which ones are in the answer, with green boxes solidifying that the letter is in the right place. Though the game was released in October 2021, it became a viral sensation in early 2022 after players began posting their Wordle boxes on Twitter, showcasing how many tries it took them to guess the correct answer. While some people have become annoyed at the frequency that people post – as was the case of Wordlinator, the Twitter bot that punished those posting their Wordle boxes - many have found it encouraging.

Related: How to Solve Wordle Puzzles (Tips & Strategies)

To settle one of the game’s biggest debates, TikTok user crvlwanek (via Kotaku) created a computer program that revealed the best and worst starting words to use in Wordle. Crvlawanek was responding to a linguist who claimed the best first word in Wordle is "irate". Crvlawanek developed a computer program that revealed the actual best starting word is "later", followed by "alter", "alert", and "arose". "Irate" came in fifth, with some other good first Wordle words being "stare", "arise", "raise", and "learn". The program utilized Wordle’s word list from its source code hack, which has all of the answers from both past and future puzzles. The program gave a score to every word based on the frequency of each individual letter. That data was then used to score potential starting words, from the best to worst words. The program revealed that the worst possible starting word in Wordle is "xylyl" due to the infrequency that those letters are found in Wordle’s word list.

Wordle hack reveals all of the game's five-letter words.

Using "later" at the beginning of Wordle can increase the chance of solving the puzzle, as proved through computer science. That being said, many players simply enjoy Wordle’s challenge, so it’s not necessary to always employ the best possible strategy to win. Part of the fun is trying new strategies each day and using trial and error to perfect them. There are other ways to increase the game’s challenge, too, such as Wordle’s Hard Mode setting which forces players to utilize all clues from subsequent guesses.

Crvlwanek’s computer program revealed Wordle’s best starting word, however, most puzzles can’t be guessed right off the bat. Instead, players will need to choose good words in their next few guesses if they stand a chance of solving the daily puzzle. The first word is important, but solving the Wordle takes precision in all guesses.

Next: Wordle: What The Boxes Mean

Source: crvlwanek/TikTok (via Kotaku)