Wordle game displayed on a screen and Wordle game displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland on July 20, 2023. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
What's your go-to starting Wordle word? According to a new analysis from the New York Times, your opening word may in fact be one of the least efficient.
Sunday, the NYT released an analysis of how people performed in more 515 million games of Wordle, the NYT's popular letter scramble game, including what some of the "best" and "least efficient" opening words were.
Here's an overview of the results:
Adieu is one of the most popular opening words -- but its the least efficient
According to the analysis, the four-vowel word, along with audio, were top opening guesses. The analysis however showed that starting with both vowel-heavy words puts players at a "disadvantage."
"On average, players who started with ADIEU needed about a third of a turn more to solve their Wordles compared with players who started with SLATE, adding up to 132 extra turns over the course of a year," the analysis said, adding that players who stated with ADIEU over SLATE saw a higher chance of failure.
"Of the 30 most popular Wordle openers, ADIEU performed the worst," the analysis stated.
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People guess 'holiday' words on holidays
On holidays -- like Halloween -- the analysis showed a spike in words associated with that holiday.
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For example, the analysis showed that "MERRY" spiked in popularity on Dec. 24, 2022. So did "RISEN" and "BUNNY" on Easter.
Additionally, the word guess "PARTY has a little spike every weekend," the analysis found.
These words are getting more popular
According to the analysis, STARE and SLATE are becoming more popular as opening word guesses.
At the same time, the popularity of AUDIO, ARISE, CRANE and RAISE appears to be dwindling, according to the analysis.
What were the hardest words to solve?
The most challenging words to solve either started with the letter "J," ended in a "Y" or had a double letter, the analysis said.
According to the NYT, the hardest of all words for 2022 had all three: "JAZZY."
Some of the other tough words to solve included "JOKER," "JUDGE," "RIPER" and "NANNY."
You can read the full analysis here.
