Today’s Wordle Answer - Aug 20 #1888 – NYT Wordle Hints & Answers

How to Improve Your Wordle Strategy

The advice below is measured against every one of the 1,888 Wordle answers published so far, not against general English. That distinction matters more than it sounds.

1. Target the letters that actually show up. Across the full answer archive the most common letters are E (47%), A (40%), R (36%), O (30%), T (30%), L (28%), I (28%), S (25%) - the percentage is how often each appears somewhere in an answer.
2. Do not waste a slot on a trailing S. Only 1% of answers end in S, because the puzzle largely avoids simple plurals. Openers like ROAST, NOTES and TEARS spend a letter on one of the weakest positions on the board.
3. Expect repeats more often than you think. 31% of answers use the same letter twice. If four greens will not resolve, a repeat is the usual reason.
4. Make guess two disagree with guess one. Once an opener has told you what is not there, the fastest second guess reuses none of its letters.
5. Use position, not just presence. A letter is worth far more when you know where it sits - see the position table below.
6. Let our tool finish it. Our Wordle Solver narrows the field from the greens, yellows and greys you already have.

Best Wordle Starting Words

Every candidate below was scored against all 1,888 past answers. Letters revealed is how many of the word's distinct letters the average answer contains; exact position is how many of those land green on the first guess. The score adds the two, so a green counts double a yellow - knowing where a letter sits narrows the field far more than knowing only that it is somewhere.

#	Opener	Letters revealed	Exact position	Score
1	STARE	1.79	0.60	2.39
2	SLATE	1.71	0.64	2.35
3	CRATE	1.73	0.61	2.34
4	ARISE	1.77	0.57	2.33
5	TRACE	1.73	0.59	2.32
6	RAISE	1.77	0.55	2.31
7	CRANE	1.67	0.63	2.30
8	CARTE	1.73	0.55	2.27
9	SALET	1.71	0.56	2.26
10	TARES	1.79	0.41	2.19
11	TEARS	1.79	0.40	2.19
12	LEAST	1.71	0.48	2.18

Openers that rank well here do so by covering common letters without duplicating any of them. The bottom of the list is where the vowel-stacked guesses land: ADIEU and AUDIO buy vowels at the cost of the consonants that actually separate one candidate from another.

The most common letter in each position

Position	Most common	Runner-up	Third
1st letter	S 15%	C 9%	B 8%
2nd letter	O 13%	A 12%	R 12%
3rd letter	A 14%	O 11%	I 11%
4th letter	E 13%	N 8%	I 8%
5th letter	E 20%	Y 14%	T 11%

Recent Wordle Answers

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