Best Starting Words

Top 15 Starting Words

Each word below is scored by summing how often its letters (counted once each) appear across all 8,636 valid 5-letter words. A higher score means the word tests more common letters at once, which is the classic strategy for narrowing down a puzzle fast.

#	Word	Letter Score
1	AROSE	18,514
2	ARISE	18,189
3	RAISE	18,189
4	SERAI	18,189
5	ALOES	18,051
6	ARLES	18,014
7	EARLS	18,014
8	LARES	18,014
9	LASER	18,014
10	LEARS	18,014
11	RALES	18,014
12	REALS	18,014
13	SERAL	18,014
14	STOAE	17,941
15	ASTER	17,904

Why letter frequency matters

The five most common letters across the whole word list are S, E, A, O, R (in that order). A starting word using several of these at once eliminates or confirms more possibilities on your very first guess than a word built from rare letters.

Try it on your puzzle

Use the solver above to narrow down results after any guess. Enter your letters and their colors to see every word that still fits.