Wordle Opener Scorer

Type any five-letter starting word and see how much it narrows the game down: how many possible words it leaves on average, how it ranks against 3,209 other openers, and the colour results it is most likely to give you. Every figure on this page is computed, not voted on or guessed.

The 25 best Wordle openers

Ranked by the average number of words still possible after the first guess, across all 3,209 words in our list. RAISE comes out on top: on average it leaves 90.1 words standing.

Rank	Word	Avg. words left	Ruled out	Colour patterns	Unluckiest case
1	RAISE	90.1	97.2%	136	244
2	SANER	95.3	97.0%	145	304
3	ARISE	97.4	97.0%	136	244
4	LATER	97.4	97.0%	144	293
5	LASER	98.7	96.9%	135	299
6	ALTER	98.8	96.9%	138	293
7	IRATE	99.0	96.9%	127	257
8	ORATE	99.3	96.9%	128	269
9	TASER	99.9	96.9%	145	322
10	AROSE	100.0	96.9%	128	258
11	SLIER	104.7	96.7%	139	295
12	CARET	107.8	96.6%	158	340
13	ASTER	108.8	96.6%	122	322
14	SIREN	110.4	96.6%	141	319
15	OATEN	110.6	96.6%	132	254
16	SNARE	110.6	96.6%	145	304
17	ALIEN	111.4	96.5%	138	284
18	AIRED	111.7	96.5%	142	292
19	LOSER	111.8	96.5%	130	314
20	CATER	112.4	96.5%	152	340
21	LITER	112.9	96.5%	138	313
22	STARE	112.9	96.5%	140	322
23	TARED	113.5	96.5%	148	375
24	AISLE	114.3	96.4%	129	310
25	OARED	114.4	96.4%	130	330

How the popular openers score

The words people recommend most often, measured the same way:

Rank	Word	Avg. words left	Ruled out	Colour patterns	Unluckiest case
3	ARISE	97.4	97.0%	136	244
22	STARE	112.9	96.5%	140	322
37	SLATE	117.4	96.3%	155	325
41	TRACE	118.2	96.3%	151	340
50	CRANE	121.6	96.2%	147	349
202	ADIEU	148.2	95.4%	90	359
988	AUDIO	218.6	93.2%	105	522

Vowel-heavy openers do worse than their reputation. AUDIO tests 4 vowels but leaves 218.6 words on average, against 90.1 for RAISE: knowing which vowels a word holds is less useful than it feels when you cannot place any of them, and most consonants stay untested. Our starting words guide explains the trade-off.

How the score works

For an opener, we play it against every word in the list as if that word were the answer, and record the colours Wordle would show. Words that produce the same colours can't be told apart after the first guess, so they form a group. If the answer is equally likely to be any word, the chance of landing in a group is its size divided by the list size, and the words left standing are the group size. Averaging gives the score: the sum of each group's size squared, divided by the number of words. Lower is better.

Avg. words left: the score above.
Ruled out: the share of the list that one guess eliminates on average.
Colour patterns: how many different results the word can produce. More patterns usually means smaller groups.
Unluckiest case: the size of the largest group, the most words you can be left with.

Repeated letters follow Wordle's rules: letters in the right spot are matched first, and a repeated letter only turns yellow while the answer still holds an unmatched copy of it.

What this does and doesn't tell you

It's not Wordle's own answer list. We score against 3,209 common English five-letter words, not the list The New York Times draws from, so the exact numbers will differ from other analyses. The order of good and bad openers is what carries over.
Plurals are left out. Of 4,667 five-letter words in the source list, 1,458 simple plurals were removed. Wordle answers are almost never plurals, and keeping them would unfairly reward every opener that ends in S.
It scores one guess. What wins games is guess two; see our strategy guide.
Words outside our list can still be scored; the rank shows where they would fit.

Using these figures

You're welcome to quote or link to these rankings. Please credit MorningHint Wordle Opener Scorer (computed September 16, 2026).

Want a nudge on today's puzzle instead? Our daily clues open one at a time, and the answer stays hidden until you ask for it.

Word list

Based on SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists) by Kevin Atkinson, from the Debian wamerican package, filtered as described above (a modified version: plurals, capitalised words and words that are not five letters removed).

Word list licences

SCOWL. Copyright 2000-2011 by Kevin Atkinson. Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell these word lists, the associated scripts, the output created from the scripts, and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appears in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. Kevin Atkinson makes no representations about the suitability of this array for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

WordNet (used to build SCOWL's word inflections). WordNet 1.6 Copyright 1997 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. THIS SOFTWARE AND DATABASE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED. BY WAY OF EXAMPLE, BUT NOT LIMITATION, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE OR THAT THE USE OF THE LICENSED SOFTWARE, DATABASE OR DOCUMENTATION WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY THIRD PARTY PATENTS, COPYRIGHTS, TRADEMARKS OR OTHER RIGHTS. The name of Princeton University or Princeton may not be used in advertising or publicity pertaining to distribution of the software and/or database. Title to copyright in this software, database and any associated documentation shall at all times remain with Princeton University and LICENSEE agrees to preserve same.

Ispell (source of SCOWL's American spellings). Copyright 1993, Geoff Kuenning, Granada Hills, CA. All rights reserved. Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met: 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All modifications to the source code must be clearly marked as such. Binary redistributions based on modified source code must be clearly marked as modified versions in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. (clause 4 removed with permission from Geoff Kuenning) 5. The name of Geoff Kuenning may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission. THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY GEOFF KUENNING AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL GEOFF KUENNING OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

The remaining sources SCOWL draws on at this size (Moby Words II, Brian Kelk's UK English word list, 12Dicts, the Jargon File and 1990 US Census names) are in the public domain.

MorningHint is an independent site. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to The New York Times Company. Wordle is a trademark of The New York Times Company. Word meanings are adapted from Wiktionary and reusable under CC BY-SA; all other content is ours. Contact: help.morninghint@gmail.com