The New York Times has studied the data and determined that you’re playing Wordle wrong.
The paper shared a few tips based on analyzing more than 515 million Wordle puzzles in 2023. Here are a few things they learned:
While ‘Adieu’ is the most popular starting word due to its four vowels, it’s actually one of the least efficient starters. ‘Slate’, ‘Trace’, or ‘Crane’ are much better. Words that start with ‘J’ – like ‘Jazzy’ or ‘Joker’ – were among the toughest words of the last year.
A lot of y’all are cheating – an estimated 1 out of every 250 Wordle players gets the word on their first guess – way, way too high a percentage to be a coincidence.