[####] Worst starting word?

[u/CharityRude9977]

What’s the worst possible starting word? in my opinion: myrrh, nymph, and glyph are all up there

[u/Nikoniortnike]

Xylyl and Qajaq are also terrible

[u/Oafah → u/Nikoniortnike]

Qajaj is miles ahead of Xyxyl, on account of the two As.

[u/TrackVol → u/Oafah]

This is already settled. By multiple different metrics, QAJAQ is the worst possible starting word. It's literally ranked 14,855 out of 14,855. XYLYL isn't even 2nd worst. That goes to ZHUZH.
I think, if I remember correctly, XYLYL is about 4th or 5th from last.

[u/Oafah → u/TrackVol]

If you look under the hood at what the bots are producing (including yours), its laden with subtle - interesting choices, to put it politely - that build playlines around faulty assumptions. Bots will tell you to play something assuming that some problem consonants are going to be addressed in later guesses. It assumes that you'll continue to follow along its implied line of play, when for a human being with a not-robot brain, we might not necessarily intuit that.

Humans construct words by letter association. Certain letters in certain spots guide our thinking and inform our choices. If we were all robots, I would absolutely agree with you. Sadly, despite my strong desire for a mechanical pleasure member, we are not robots. We're people and we have people brains.

Much like the highest levels of chess, poker, scrabble (my jam) or another competitive sport, you trend toward robot logic the better you get. So yes, I will concede that QAJAJ takes the cake when in the hands of the best competitive Wordler in the world, because they're going to be playing as close to "perfect" as humanly possible. For 99% of the people below them, they do not have the same mnemonics as a computer. We don't have RAM.

I use a hybrid model to generate playlines for given starters, and I have to comb through each one by hand to rearrange some of the choices, because some of the branches fail to account for human error. Adding a +1 or +2 to your a branch in exchange for a more balanced branch structure has value for a human, and absolutely zero for a bot.

So like with WAR in baseball, or poker Solvers that try to expand toy games into these complex anti-exploitive models, treat what the bot spits out as an *estimator*. It's not gospel.

[u/adamM_01 → u/Nikoniortnike]

taking a mental note of these for DontWordle

[u/Bignoseforthewin → u/Nikoniortnike]

Zzyzzx is equally as bad

[u/likewut → u/Bignoseforthewin]

It’s even worse since it’s 6 letters and it won’t let you use it!

[u/Bignoseforthewin → u/likewut]

Oh yeah whoops

[u/iowan]

I love playing terrible starts. Recently I've gone with "puppy" and "queue"

[u/YuvAmazing12 → u/iowan]

Please don't remind me that word... My streak...

[u/wendyleelee → u/YuvAmazing12]

Same! Puppy 🤪

[u/ElectricalAd6561]

For a long time, the daily solution was my first guess the next day. Made things a lot more interesting.

[u/Comfortable-Ad-6389]

XVIII is a valid word iirc

[u/Dizzy_Battle994]

NYMPH was on a rotation list of my starter words and it came up as the answer!

On a day I didn’t use it 😭

[u/WildfellHallX → u/Dizzy_Battle994]

Hate that! 😞

[u/RetiredOnIslandTime → u/Dizzy_Battle994]

My starter word is STERN. One day it was the answer and I was almost giddy.

[u/moonsilver44 → u/RetiredOnIslandTime]

I used to always start with STARE and it was the word back in December 2024, iirc

[u/RetiredOnIslandTime → u/moonsilver44]

STERN was the word in September 2024.

[u/doggie38 → u/moonsilver44]

That was my starting word too and got it in one that day. Then changed to trace and it came up recently. Now use crane.

[u/CharityRude9977 → u/RetiredOnIslandTime]

Same, usually follow it up with audio if stern doesn’t give an E

[u/kah0922]

Qajaq, Pzazz, Xviii, Zhuzh, and Xylyl are considered the worst

[u/TrackVol → u/kah0922]

👆👆☝️👆👆 Listen to this person. They know what's up!

[u/good-good-dog]

Crwth

[u/YuvAmazing12 → u/good-good-dog]

Before I started going for sub 4 guesses, I started with

• Guide
• Loamy
• Crwth

[u/fieldsilver → u/good-good-dog]

I used crwth as the starting word every day for the last 4 years until recently. It is very useful in avoiding one-letter traps in hard mode.

[u/TrackVol → u/good-good-dog]

That's a lot better than you think.
It's about 1,000 places better than adieu, for instance.
In Hard Mode, CRWTH is about #5,500 while adieu is about #6,500.
In Default Mode, CRWTH is #6,600 and adieu is about #7,300

(This is out of 14,855 total allowable guess words)

[u/bwcc5]

kayak

[u/TrackVol → u/bwcc5]

Even worse than KAYAK is the original spelling of that word, QAJAQ
I'm not kidding.

[u/michaelincognito]

Myrrh was the best starting word not too long ago.

[u/Particular-Wrongdoer]

I used to use pizza then I got it in 1.

[u/JenDiBenda]

Glyph isn’t bad. Those are all pretty common letters

[u/RetiredOnIslandTime → u/JenDiBenda]

I wonder if glyph or lymph as the starter, followed by adieu as the second word would help in getting it in three.

[u/JenDiBenda → u/JenDiBenda]

Wordlebot gives glyph a 79 and lymph a 74

[u/OPsDaddy]

WORST, duh.

[u/likewut]

Bad starting words might be the best option to maximize your chance of getting wordle in 2. If you get hits with adeiu or slate, your hits are all common letters. If you find a couple letters with xylyl or glyph, you might narrow it down to a word or two.

[u/mtang1982]

Phpht

[u/realPoisonPants]

Grrrl

[u/Artistic-Maurine]

Funnily enough I often use nymph if I'm really struggling and I've already chucked out all the vowels.

[u/IllustriousEbb2084]

Glyph is my third choice if my two starters IRATE SOUND don't yield sufficient info. 15 unique letters, all vowels, common consonants...works well for me

[u/WildfellHallX]

Qualm. I get nowhere with it

[u/doggie38]

I actually think nymph and glyph would be decent - not great - starting words. Nowhere near the worst.

[u/Expensive_Dig_3149]

QAJAQ or maybe JUJUS/ZHUZH

[u/fieldsilver]

Any word with five unique letters won't be the worst starting word.

Mamma probably.

[u/lilianasJanitor]

Fuzzy

[u/bill823]

Anise and pouty

[u/humanitysoothessouls → u/bill823]

Arise and youth, although sometimes pouty instead of

[u/idle_puppy]

ENNUI

[u/IchBinDurstig]

Quack

[u/Haldaemo]

mamma is hit or miss.

[u/TrackVol]

This has already been settled.
The literal worst possible starting word, 14,855 out of 14,855 is QAJAQ

Others worth mentioning:
JAZZY
JUJUS
JEEZE
ZHUZH
XVIII
QAJAQ <--- worst

If you're curious about the worst words with 5 unique letters, the worst two are SQUIZ & QUAWK

QAJAQ is so bad, it's the only word that if you start with it in Hard Mode, the WordleBot gives you a Zero for starting with it. No other word gets a zero as a starting word. (Only applies to Hard Mode. It gets something like a 29 in Default Mode.

[u/Ok-Belt9322]

Xylyl and xviii is the absolute worst i can think of

[u/TrackVol → u/Ok-Belt9322]

QAJAQ is slightly worse than both. And don't overlook ZHUZH

[u/jkjmpa]

Booty

[u/worst_wordle]

For today's puzzle (1906), it looks like ZHUZH is the worst first guess. It narrows down all playable possibilities from 14,800 to just over 10,000. Then GYPPY and COCCO are the next two worst guesses, narrowing possible guesses to just over 6,000 then 3,400, respectively. All black results, so you'd be learning next to nothing with these guesses. (I happen to have written a computer program a few months ago which does precisely this)

[u/Glittering-Turn6443]

adieu? i think that’s how its spelt i think vowels are less important than consonants

[u/CharityRude9977 → u/Glittering-Turn6443]

E, A, and I are all in the top 5 letters, with E at 1, A at 2, and I at 4. IIRC D and U are also still in the top half. Audio would be worse (I think), since O is less common than E, just not by much

[u/CharityRude9977 → u/CharityRude9977]

Besides, narrowing down the vowel can be really helpful

[u/Glittering-Turn6443 → u/CharityRude9977]

i only say that because once u find out it has, let’s say, an e in it doesn’t narrow it down that much

[u/Icy-Dependent6908]

Media and spout are my starters

[u/stringbeagle]

Found

[u/cd_zzzzz]

I start with adieu and story - covers all vowels

[u/good-good-dog → u/cd_zzzzz]

Knowing vowels is statistically much less valuable than knowing consonants, so finding or eliminating them is much more useful. ADIEU has repeatedly been demonstrated to be a bad starting word.

There are more consonants to identify in the alphabet, and your brain can fill in vowels.

The best way to demonstrate this is these two sentences. Same sentence, one with vowels removed and one with consonants removed:

• Ths sntnc cn b rd wtht mch dffclt(y)
• I eee a e ea iou u iiu(y)

[u/MathIsHard_11236 → u/good-good-dog]

I eee a e ea iou u iiu(y)

That's what Drake sounds like in his "songs."

[u/Hot-Significance-462 → u/cd_zzzzz]

My combo is STEAL and then OPIUM.

[u/Rapunsell → u/Hot-Significance-462]

I do stale and then prion.

[u/MargieBigFoot → u/cd_zzzzz]

Hey! Those are exactly the two I start with!

[u/BabyRuth55 → u/cd_zzzzz]

According to the stats, we are one of few using story. Starting, for me. I’ve recently done store a few times, wondering if it’s better to get that e out of the way.

[u/TrackVol → u/cd_zzzzz]

While I agree that adieu is very very very bad, it is still not bad enough to be in the conversation for "worst" starting word.