These are the best and worst letters to guess in Wordle

Your Wordle editorial can have more impact than you might think. While many players stick to familiar starting words like “train” or “close,” relying on the same guess every day is not necessarily the most effective strategy. With years of Wordle data available, we know that some letters appear more frequently than others. Prioritize common letters e.g And, A and R It gives you a better chance of uncovering useful clues early, helping you solve the puzzle more efficiently rather than relying on habit or luck.

In order to get the best word starters, you should know which letters appear most frequently in the English language. I have connected with great minds in… Oxford English Dictionary -You know, the huge multi-volume dictionary that no one actually owns, but your school librarian loves. A representative of the Office of the Executive Director sent me a list that the staff had prepared and analyzed all the major entries in the shortened version of the dictionary.

“It is worth noting that the piece is very old,” the OED representative said apologetically. “The statistics are stated to be taken from the Concise Oxford English Dictionary in 2004, although current colleagues are not sure when the piece itself was written, and I’m afraid we have no more recent analysis of this kind.”

The list may be 22 years old, but I’ll take it. The alphabet is not like ice cream flavors or musical acts – new, trendy letters were not introduced at that time. So, whether you’re just starting to learn Wordle, or you want to change up your initial words and make sure they still hit the most common letters, this list is for you.

S begins most English words

The most common letter is not surprising to most people: it’s E, followed immediately by another vowel, A. These letters are much more common than the last two letters on the Oxford English Dictionary’s list, which are J and Q. (Is anyone else surprised that J uses less than X and Z?)

An analysis of the Oxford English Dictionary found that “the letter E is 56 times more common than Q in the formation of individual English words.”

She points out that “there are more English words that start with the letter S than any other letter.”

So, Wordle players, bookmark this article, and you may find yourself in a slightly better position in upcoming games. Below is the alphabetical order according to the number of times they appear in the 2004 Concise Oxford English Dictionary.

The most used letters in the English language

1. e

2. A

3. R

4. I

5. Hey

6. T

7. n

8. S

9. to

10. C

11. Sh

12. D

13. p

14. M

15. H

16. g

17. for

18. F

19. Y

20. W

21. your

22. V

23. X

24. g

25. C

26. S

Gayle Faschingbauer Cooper, CNET editor, journalist and pop culture lover, is co-author of Whatever Happened to Pudding? The Lost Games, Tastes and Trends of the ’70s and ’80s, as well as The Totally Sweet ’90s. She has been a journalist since 1989, working for Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. It is the tenth generation in date of birth, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars return, they’ll be first in line.

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