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Final rule: Your second guess should never include your greens from guess one (unless you're on hard mode). (That S guess will come in handy down the track when you realize you're incredibly dim-witted and you can only think of four-letter guesses. That said, I always have a few first-guess rules. TREAD is a winner, but I like to mix up my first word. Aside from this being the purest form of Wordling (as the experts say, obviously), when I'm lucky enough to accidentally guess three or four of five letters correctly, it's immensely satisfying. I truly pick the first word that pops into my mind, with absolutely no strategy whatsoever. I'm a high-risk, high-reward Wordle player. Oscar Gonzalez The first word you think of
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Then it's just a matter of putting all the letters I uncovered into the spots I think they're in, and banging my head on the table, saying, "I'm not this stupid, am I?" until I figure it out. I steal Mark's word, ADIEU, and follow it up with STORY. Either way, I dunno what we're all arguing about. But every time I stray from ADIEU, it manifests into a gigantic uphill struggle I barely recover from. Sometimes to shake things up - mostly based on pressure from Jackson Ryan - I'll try something different. Hilariously, I still sometimes misspell it.
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I cycle through TEARY, PIOUS and ADIEU as a first word, to knock out some common letters and make inroads with vowels.
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At the very least, this often seems to give me something on the board early. I'm inspired a little by the Wheel of Fortune move of guessing RSTLNE first, and with this, I also knock off two vowels. Don't be afraid to deviate from your regular starter word, though - sometimes a random word that pops into your head ends up being way more intuitive than you could have ever imagined. Get 4 out of 5 vowels out of the way immediately and focus on narrowing down consonants. Hope it gives you a BOOST or maybe a NUDGE. In the meantime, I asked CNET staffers to share their Wordle strategies and favorite starting words. I asked Wordle creator Josh Wardle to share his techniques - I never heard back.