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What your first guess is for
Your first guess is the only one you make knowing nothing. Its job isn't to hit the answer. It's to find out which common letters are in play, so your second guess can be smarter.
That's why strong openers tend to look alike: five different letters, two or three vowels, and consonants that turn up in lots of five-letter words, such as R, S, T, L and N.
Three rules of thumb
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Use five different letters
A repeated letter tests one letter twice. You learn less, unless you already suspect a double.
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Mix vowels with common consonants
Two or three vowels plus letters like R, S, T, L or N cover a lot of ground. A vowel-heavy opener like AUDIO finds vowels fast but leaves the consonants for later.
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Pick one and keep it
Using the same opener every day makes your results easier to read, because you learn what its colors usually mean.
Popular openers, compared
Six words people often start with, broken down by the letters they test.
| Word | Vowels | From R S T L N | Repeats | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CRANE | A, E | R, N | None | A balanced first look |
| SLATE | A, E | S, L, T | None | Three common consonants at once |
| STARE | A, E | S, T, R | None | Like SLATE, with R instead of L |
| TRACE | A, E | T, R | None | Like CRANE, trading N for T |
| AUDIO | A, U, I, O | None | None | Finding vowels quickly |
| ADIEU | A, I, E, U | None | None | Same idea as AUDIO |
Planning a second guess
If your opener comes back mostly gray, don't chase it. Play a second word with five new letters and read both rows together. These pairs share no letters, so two guesses test ten.
- SLATECORNYAdds O and Y
- CRANEMOISTAdds O, I, S and T
- AUDIOSPENTAll five vowels in two guesses
Hard mode: any green or yellow letter has to be reused in later guesses, so a five-new-letters follow-up only works if your opener came back all gray.
One game, three guesses
A worked example. This is a sample game, not a recent puzzle.
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S and T are in the word, but not in spots 1 and 4. L, A and E are out.
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The word ends in ST, and O sits somewhere other than spot 2. Only a few words fit, such as GHOST and FROST.
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Solved in three. FROST would have been a fair guess too; testing G, H, F and R first is the safer way to choose.
Common mistakes
- Putting a yellow letter back in the same spot. Yellow means “in the word, not here”.
- Reusing gray letters. Each one is a wasted slot, unless it's a second copy of a letter you've already placed.
- Forgetting repeats. Words like SPEED and LLAMA exist. If nothing else fits, consider a double. See how duplicate-letter colors work.
How we wrote this
Letter counts in this guide come from the words themselves. We don't publish win rates or difficulty scores, because we can't verify them. Editorial policy