Strategy guides › Word Six
Word Six openers that work on our word list, and the traps to dodge
Third guess. Four green tiles, O U N D, and one grey R in front of them. It feels like you are nearly done. You are not: seven of our answers still fit, and if you try them one at a time you will run out of rows on three of them.
Everything on this page was computed on the actual lists the game uses. The daily and unlimited answers come from a list of 1,409 everyday five-letter words; your guesses are checked against a dictionary of 12,653. That list is not the same as anyone else’s, so the advice is not quite the same either.
Know what our answers look like
Our answer list was built to hold words an average adult knows instantly, and it leaves out plurals. That one rule changes a lot. Only 20 of the 1,409 answers end in S, and most of those are words like GLASS, PRESS and BLISS that were never plurals. So a final S is a poor bet, and an S at the front is a good one: 16% of our answers start with S, more than any other letter.
Here is where the letters actually sit, as the share of answers with that letter in that position.
| Position | Most common letters |
|---|---|
| 1st | S 16%, B 8%, T 7%, F 7%, D 6%, G 6% |
| 2nd | O 14%, R 13%, A 11%, E 11%, I 9% |
| 3rd | A 14%, I 11%, O 10%, E 8%, U 7% |
| 4th | E 15%, N 8%, then S, C, R, A at 7% |
| 5th | E 20%, Y 13%, T 12%, R 9%, D 8% |
Half of all answers contain an E, and 278 of them end in one. A Y in the last square is the second most likely ending. Counting presence anywhere in the word, the top letters run E, R, A, O, T, I, L, S, N.
One more number worth carrying around: 405 answers, 28.7%, contain a repeated letter (AGREE, APPLE, ALARM). When your grid has gone quiet and nothing new is landing, try doubling a letter you already have.
The best first words, measured
To rate an opener, we scored it against every one of the 1,409 answers and asked: on average, how many answers are still possible after it? Then we went further and played each opener through to the end with a simple rule: always guess a word that could still be the answer, choosing the one that leaves the fewest answers on average. That rule never breaks Hard mode, so it doubles as a Hard-mode test.
| Opener | Answers left on average | Average guesses | Solved in six |
|---|---|---|---|
| SLATE | 43.7 | 3.32 | 1,406 of 1,409 |
| STARE | 41.0 | 3.37 | 1,408 |
| IRATE | 35.0 | 3.38 | 1,408 |
| ROATE | 32.4 | 3.39 | 1,406 |
| RAISE | 37.0 | 3.41 | 1,404 |
| CRANE | 51.8 | 3.45 | 1,405 |
| AUDIO | 105.6 | 3.55 | 1,405 |
| ADIEU | 70.8 | 3.55 | 1,404 |
Two things stand out. First, the word that splits the list best on turn one (ROATE, which our dictionary accepts) is not the one that finishes fastest. SLATE leaves more answers on average but sets up the next guesses better, and it is the quickest opener we tested. Second, the vowel-hunting openers are clearly worse here. AUDIO leaves more than twice as many answers as SLATE, because U and the I-O ending are rare in our list, and because it spends a whole row without testing S, T or R.
If you want one word to type every morning, type SLATE. If you would rather open with a real answer that also scores well, STARE and IRATE are both on the answer list.
The family trap, and how to get out
Some answers come in families that differ by a single letter. These are the big ones in our list:
_OUND has eight members (BOUND, FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, POUND, ROUND, SOUND, WOUND), _IGHT has seven (EIGHT, FIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT, RIGHT, SIGHT, TIGHT), and _ATCH, GRA_E and SHA_E have six each. In all, 158 answers belong to a family of four or more words that share four letters in place.
In those spots, stop guessing candidates. Spend one row on a word that contains as many of the possible first letters as you can. For the _OUND family above, SWAMP splits the seven into five groups: an S, W, M or P lights up and you know the answer; if none do, it is BOUND, FOUND or HOUND. When we let our simple strategy make that kind of move whenever a small group of answers outnumbered the rows left, SLATE solved all 1,409 answers inside six guesses, with an average of 3.26.
What our Hard mode really checks
Hard mode in our game makes each guess respect the row directly before it: every green from that row must stay in its square, and every yellow letter must appear somewhere in the word. It does not look further back, and it does not stop you reusing a grey letter. So the SWAMP escape is mostly off the table in Hard mode. With O U N D locked green, every guess must end in OUND, and you can only test one first letter per row.
That is exactly where our Hard-mode-safe test strategy lost. Across the eight openers, the answers that beat it were SOUND, WOUND, POUND, ROUND, WATCH, PATCH, SHAVE, GRAZE and STUMP: families, almost every one. If you play Hard mode, the defence has to start earlier. Avoid locking in four letters of a common pattern on guess two; a guess that tests two new consonants is worth more than one that turns a fourth tile green.
Practice
There is no special practice puzzle for this one: open Unlimited, type SLATE, and watch which of the patterns above turn up. When you see four greens and a family, count the candidates before you spend a row on one of them.
Four greens is not a win. It is a head count.
