The odds get marginally better every subsequent game (e.g., 1 in 2,314; 1 in 2,313) assuming the correct answer isn't a repeat of the previous days' solutions. With that in mind, it's highly unlikely that 1% of all players are guessing correctly on the first try — and much more likely that some folks are cheating.
So I Googled It
And the first result that popped up from Real Statistics Using Excel (which seemed credible) said: “Since there are 2,315 possible target words in Wordle, the probability that you will guess the target in exactly one try is 1/2315 = 0.000432.
So if we guess BIPED to start out with, there's a 91/2315 = 3.93% chance that we get the Wordle in two (so long as our second guess is from the 2315 word answer list). A qajaq! More commonly spelled kayak.
Because very few people fail at a given Wordle (typically around 3%), I use the percent of people who use all six guesses, whether they win (6/6) or fail (X/6) as a proxy for a word's difficulty. This percentage varies quite a bit, suggesting that some answers are definitely harder than others.
Wordle in four is the last respectable score. If this was “Lord of the Rings,” a score of four would be Minas Tirath, the last stop on the way to fiery Mordor, and a score of five. Most people should, on average, get it in at least 4, even on days where it is harder.
Sweden is the world's best country at Wordle, with an average of 3.72. The US is ranked #18 in the world for Wordle, with a national average of 3.92. The American state with the best Wordle average is North Dakota (3.65). The US city with the best Wordle scores is Saint Paul, Minnesota, with an average of 3.51.
On average 95% of target words can be solved within 6 guesses with average game length is approximately 4 rounds. By the time the third guess has been made, a good player will have located about 4 target letters with 2 or 3 in their correct positions.
Spencer Evans was the one whose accomplishment impressed me the most: 83 unbroken wins and counting. A wordsmith himself, Evans first discovered Wordle earlier this month.
A pair of MIT researchers recently set out to find the optimal starting word for the popular online puzzle, discovering that the statistically superior first guess is SALET, which is a 15th century helmet.
PARER - which is a short blade used to peel fruit and vegetables - is the word with the highest failure rate in Wordle. A whopping 48 percent of players failed to find the answer for the September 16 puzzle. The second hardest word of 2022 is FOYER, ending thousands of winning streaks with a 26 percent failure rate.
The least common letters in all words are the usual suspects: J, Q, Z, X, and it's unlikely any five-letter Wordle word would contain any of those characters. F, V, and K are also uncommon, but these letters have higher odds of being in one of the five possible Wordle positions.
This means the top most commonly used letters in 5-letter words (in terms of total frequency as well as average frequency) were the letters A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, etc.
Start with a word that has a lot of vowels.
Some Wordle players have found success in starting with a word that has several vowels in it. “Adieu,” “audio” or “canoe,” for instance, may be good words to start with because at least three out of the five letters are vowels.
The Strategy Behind the Best Wordle Starting Words
If you figure out which vowels you're working with, you can quickly narrow down your list of potential solution words. By this reasoning, words like "ouija," "adieu," "audio," and "raise" would be the ideal first guesses in a Wordle game.
Let's initialize the game. As we can see, there are 12972 words of 5 letters in the Wordle dictionary.
Wordle keeps track of how many times you've played, what percentage of games you've won, along with your current streak. If you miss one, that streak is reset to zero, which can be a pretty big blow if you're gone for weeks or even months without missing a single word.
The simplicity of the game eventually led to it becoming a social media sensation. According to Statista, the average amount of Wordle players went from around 90 in November of 2021 to around 300,000 on January of 2022, gaining over 2 million players only a week later.
Based on his findings, O'Connor has determined that approximately 1% of the players who post their results to Twitter are guessing the correct word on their first attempt, and somewhere between 3% and 9% guess correctly on the second try.
In hard mode, Wordle can be solved in 3.5076 guesses on average (with 6 guesses at worst, i.e. 100% of the time).
Wardle was reportedly paid a figure in the range of the low seven figures for Wordle, which means at least $1 million. At the time of the sale, Wardle said, "I'd be lying if I said this hasn't been a little overwhelming.
Victory in two tries
For example, if the target word is “dance”, “lance” or “sauce”, then Wordle will return the pattern “**YGG”. These are the only three possible target words that can match this pattern.
Why Your Wordle Streak Is Gone. Your Wordle streak will disappear if you delete your browsing history, delete your browsing data, or reset your phone.
A 'streak' in Wordle is the number of consecutive times you have correctly guessed the word in a game of Wordle. If you don't play then your 'current streak' will end but your 'max streak', which is the highest streak you have ever had (and can be the same as your 'current streak') will remain unchanged.