The Best Wordle Starting Words in British English — A Data Analysis

Published 13 May 2026 · 3 min read

Which Wordle starter should you try? We ranked 985 British English answers by positional letter frequency: SLATE, SHARE and CRANE lead.

The method: letter frequency and positional value

For each answer word with five different letters, we add up how often each letter appears in its position across the answer list. We divide by the highest total, so the leading word scores 1. This is a frequency ranking, not a calculation of the fewest guesses needed to solve the puzzle. Every recommendation comes from the game’s answer list.

The most common letters in British English Wordle

Why position is the whole game

• Position 1: S (17.3 %), C (9.3 %), B (8.7 %), P (6.6 %), F (6.4 %)
• Position 2: O (13.2 %), R (13.2 %), A (12.6 %), L (9.9 %), I (9.4 %)
• Position 3: A (17.5 %), I (13.8 %), O (9.8 %), U (7.9 %), R (7.2 %)
• Position 4: E (12.9 %), N (9.2 %), A (8.0 %), R (8.0 %), C (7.9 %)
• Position 5: E (20.7 %), T (12.1 %), Y (10.8 %), D (8.5 %), R (7.8 %)

The best starters by positional score

A practical recommendation

Choose a word you recognise and can type easily. After the first guess, follow the colours: keep green letters in place, try yellow letters elsewhere, and test new letters where useful. Two different words can share letters, so they do not necessarily test ten different letters.

This article is based on an automatic analysis of all 985 British English Wordle answers in the DailyWordGames.co.uk archive. The data is recomputed on every site build.