What I Learned from Playing More than a Million Games of Wordle (2024)

FAQs

What does the average person get in Wordle? ›

The odds of solving a Wordle level in one try is 0.02% on average and is completely down to chance. The odds of solving a Wordle level in two tries is 5.67% on average. The odds of solving a Wordle level in three tries is 22.66% on average. The odds of solving a Wordle level in four tries is 33.10% on average.

Put another way: Of the roughly 2 million daily Wordle players, about 860 people should be guessing the right word on their first try. If they avoid any previous daily words (and most don't) that might rise to 1,320.

If you can consistently get Wordle in three guesses, you are pretty darn good. A score of three is solidly above average, and it is certainly nothing to frown at. Especially with harder words such as “cynic,” “vivid,” or “swill,” getting it in three is very good.

For human Wordle players, the most popular opening word by some margin is ADIEU. AUDIO, another four-vowel word, is the fourth-most popular.

Take a look on this subreddit, plenty of people post rounds where they got it in one try. It's actually a 1 in 150,000 something chance. We don't know all the words in the Wordle dictionary but there are well over 2400 5-letter words that a person would choose from, not just Wordle's 2400.

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.

For Normal mode, SLATE, SALET, ROATE and STARE are known to be some of the best alternative starting words for Wordle. For Hard mode, DEALT is believed to be the best Wordle starting word. However, COALS and NITER were found to be the best performing word pair combination for the opening two guesses.

Wordle's age breakdown is pretty unique: Young people (under 35) are the most likely to play, but many of them didn't like the game. Meanwhile, middle-aged adults (35-54) were the most likely to intend to play Wordle, while very few older Americans (55+) said they didn't like the game once they tried it.

What is the best strategy for Wordle? ›

Within two months of its public release in October 2021, the number of daily users shot from 90 to around 300,000. After the New York Times acquired Wordle from its creator, software engineer Josh Wardle, in January 2022, its player base grew to tens of millions. There's a lot of strategy behind the puzzle, as well.

This practices has raised questions about whether all players receive the same word. The short answer is yes. On a given day, players around the world have access to the same puzzle.

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.

After the New York Times acquired Wordle from its creator, software engineer Josh Wardle, in January 2022, its player base grew to tens of millions. There's a lot of strategy behind the puzzle, as well. From the words the Times picks to Wordle's place in the publication's business model, everything has its purpose.