Best five letter starting word for Wordle has been confirmed by the New York Times’ WordleBot

The news outlet also said that this information might throw off some players, as 'people claim that words like ‘IRATE,’ ‘SALET,’ or ‘RAISE,’ are the best openers.' — AFP

The WordleBot, created by the New York Times, has confirmed the most optimal starting word for the popular puzzle game, Wordle.

The objective of the online word game is to guess a secret five letter word in six tries, using a series of hints to figure it out. Once you guess a word, if any of the letters in that word appear highlighted as green, it means that letter is in the right place. If any of the letters are highlighted yellow, that letter is in the word, but it’s in the wrong space. If one of your letters is highlighted in grey, it means that that letter isn’t included anywhere in the puzzle.

Josh Wardle, a software engineer in Brooklyn, released the guessing game to the public in October 2021. In January, the New York Times purchased the game due to its overwhelming popularity, MassLive previously reported.

Since the purchase to new owners, they have introduced the new tool, WordleBot.

WordleBot will take your completed Wordle and analyse it, ranking you on overall luck and skill on a scale from 0 to 99. Then, the bot will tell you if you could have done anything differently to better solve the Wordle, according to the New York Times.

Now, this bot is giving players a whole lot more than just a performance review.

The WordleBot has confirmed “CRANE” to be the best word to start a Wordle game.

The New York Times said “WordleBot solves the 2,309 possible Wordle’s using the fewest numbers of guesses when it starts with ‘CRANE’ in normal mode and ‘DEALT’ in hard mode,” a version of Wordle where “any related hints must be used in subsequent guesses.”

The news outlet also said that this information might throw off some players, as “people claim that words like ‘IRATE,’ ‘SALET,’ or ‘RAISE,’ are the best openers.”

Ultimately, the bot confirmed that while Crane is the best word to use, it all comes down to whether you are playing as a computer, or as a person.

“WordleBot has perfect knowledge of the 2,309 solutions stored in its memory. It’s likely that you do not. So while the bot might know the precise optimal path to take from a given guess, it’s possible that you might not and that a different guess would be more likely to lead you to the answer.” – masslive.com/Tribune News Service