Wordle continues to be a national phenomenon, at least until its new owners the New York Times put it behind a paywall. But until then, Wordle players find themselves faced with the same question every day. What word should I start with?
By now, you may have your favorite, but in terms of maximizing your win potential, there may actually be a “best starter word,” a first guess that gives you more of a leg up than others.
This comes from YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown, which explains scientific concepts in informative videos. The idea is that you can use Information Theory to find a word that will have the greatest chance of solving Wordle highest percentage of the time. I will not keep you in suspense any longer.
The word is: CRANE
As in, the bird, or the thing you do with your neck.
So, how did we get here? The video opens with how the author took on this problem in the first place. Originally, they talked about using the most common letters in the English language, and that came up with a few words you could also want to try like WEARY, or you could do OTHER and then guess NAILS, which uses 10 of the 11 most common letters between them, and would give you a lot of information.
But ultimately, using information theory and the list of 2,300 or so possible Wordle answers, the simulation came up with CRANE as the best option, provided you do not badly screw up your second choice, as the model relies on you making good guesses using the information you get from CRANE in order to make this work.
The switch to CRANE happened after the author started incorporating word frequencies, not just letter usage, into the equation, which changed the dynamics a bit. The entire thing is explained in a 30 minute video that will not just give you some good possible guesses, but teach you a lot about the concept of Information Theory and how it relates to this game especially. It’s a pretty fascinating watch, and I highly suggest you check it out:
Using CRANE is of course not a guarantee that you’re going to start performing better, but if you look over the longer term of your gameplay, it’s possible. I don’t know why but I always started with DREAM, but I suppose I may begin to use one of these more science-y picks from here on out to see if it can help me do any better.
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