Why 'ADIEU' Is a Terrible Wordle Starter, and What You Should Use Instead

Theres an art and a science to picking a good starting word when youplay Wordle.

One computer analysis suggested that CRANE is the best starter; another landed on SALET.

(My personal favorite, ARISE, ranks seventh.)

Should a Wordle starter have a lot of vowels?

Im going to teach the controversy here.

Thus, knocking out four of them in your first guess is pretty smart.

(O and sometimes-vowel Y are the only ones not included.)

But that tells you very little about what the solution actually is!

Another strategy is to go with a consonant-heavy word at first, and worry about the vowels later.

The human brain does not narrow down the problem space in the same way as a computer.

I like when I find vowels early, because having the vowels helpsmesound out the words in my head.

I run through the available letters, trying them out in each position in my head.

For me, a vowel-heavy starter is helpful.

For you, it might not be.

What starters will set you up for success with your preferred solving style?

My own approach splits the difference: I think about my starters as a pair.

With ARISE and TOUCH, I get intel on all five vowelsandfive of the most common consonants.

If you play ADIEU, I think you should probably be prepared to follow it up with THORN.

Should you include Y in your starter?

Y flies under the radar since its an end-of-the-alphabet letter.

The tendency is to think it must be as rare as X and Z.

There are also words that contain a Y as theironlyvowel, like GLYPH, NYMPH, and TRYST.

LANKY or HORNY might be good picks for when youre stumped.