An expert in linguistics has explained which word you should always use to start off your daily Wordle game in order to give yourself the best chance of getting it right. If you’re so inclined you can see his reasoning in the video below.
It’s the word game that has gripped half the world, and seriously p***ed off the rest. If you’ve logged onto Twitter in recent times you have no doubt seen the strange collections of seemingly-inexplicable yellow and green squares that denote that someone has been playing Wordle.
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Whether you find it nauseating or fascinating, it’s certainly been a hit.
Anyway, if you are struggling to get started each day, a linguistics expert from TikTok has provided the perfect five-letter word with which to get the game underway each day.
Posting a video to TikTok, user @linguisticdiscovery, who claims to explain ‘the science of how language works’ explained: “If you want the highest probability of getting the first word right or the second word right in Wordle, then you need to take into account the frequency of letters in English.”
He continued: “So, what’s the best the best start word for Wordle?
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“I’ve seen ‘tears’ [and] that’s pretty good, I’ve seen ‘stare’ – that’s another good one – but my professional recommendation as a linguist as your first word in Wordle should be ‘irate’”.
He then went on to explain why.
“E, A and I are the most common vowel letters in English, and T and R are the most common consonant letters in English, so that’s my recommendation.”
Well, he would know, after all.
If you’re one of the few people who hasn’t come across Wordle just yet, it’s a word game that requires the player to guess a five-letter word by submitting guesses.
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If a letter is in the word, it goes yellow, and if it is in the correct place, it turns green.
Letters that don’t feature are then removed from the keyboard, so you know not to use them again.
You get six attempts to guess the word correctly, and – crucially – there is only one Wordle puzzle every day.
It was created by programmer Josh Wardle – hence the catchy name – for himself and his partner to play, but it shot to worldwide fame in December after loads of others jumped on the bandwagon.
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Since then, they’ve introduced the ability to share your score via emojis – so as not to give the word away – and many other versions have been created in various different languages.
Tom Wood