Does this tool tell me the single best starter word?

No. There is no single perfect starter for every situation, and different metrics favour different words. This tool focuses on simple coverage: how many common letters and positions a word touches. It is meant to help you compare reasonable candidates, not crown an absolute winner.

Why do you use the answer list instead of all guesses?

We care most about letters that appear in actual Wordle answers, not obscure guess-only words. Using the answer list keeps the charts focused on the patterns that matter for solving real puzzles.

What does the coverage score mean in the comparison?

The coverage score is a simple weighted sum of how often each letter in your starter appears overall and in its specific slot. Higher scores mean the starter spends more of its five letters on high-frequency positions. It’s not a probability of winning, just a quick way to gauge information density.

Can I use non-answer words as starters here?

The comparison panel only scores words that are valid answers in the official list. That keeps the data clean and avoids over-valuing weird guess-only words that you might not want to play anyway.

Wordle Letter Frequency & Starter Explorer

Curious why everyone talks about SLATE, CRANE, TRACE or SOARE as starter words? This explorer shows which letters and slots are most common in the official Wordle answer list and lets you compare two opening guesses to see how well they cover the high‑value alphabet.

Once you've picked a favourite starter, use the Word Finder to feed in your greens and yellows, the Hard Mode Helper to check individual guesses, and the Trap Trainer to practise tricky endgames like _ATCH and _IGHT.

Compare starter words head‑to‑head

Type two 5‑letter answers into the tiles below to see how many unique letters they use and how much of the high‑frequency alphabet they actually cover. Higher coverage scores mean the starter spends more of its letters on useful positions.

Starter A

98.1

5 unique letters • coverage score 98.1

Starter B

96.2

5 unique letters • coverage score 96.2

SLATE edges out CRANE on this simple coverage metric. It spends more of its letters on high‑frequency positions in the answer list.

Letter frequency reference

These charts use the official Wordle answer list only. Use them to see which letters show up most often overall and in each slot, and to understand why certain starters tend to perform well.

Position heatmap (top letters per slot)

Letter	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th
A	6.2%	14.8%	11.1%	6.4%	3.2%
B	7.6%	0.7%	2.7%	1.1%	0.6%
C	8.5%	1.7%	2.7%	5.3%	1.2%
D	4.9%	1.0%	3.7%	2.6%	11.3%
E	2.9%	10.2%	6.6%	20.7%	15.7%
F	5.6%	0.3%	1.2%	1.4%	1.0%
G	4.9%	0.5%	3.0%	3.0%	1.7%
H	3.5%	5.4%	0.6%	1.2%	5.0%
I	1.4%	10.1%	10.2%	6.4%	0.7%
J	1.1%	0.1%	0.2%	0.1%	—
K	1.2%	0.4%	1.4%	2.7%	4.0%
L	4.1%	7.3%	5.2%	6.0%	5.6%
M	4.9%	1.7%	3.1%	3.1%	1.7%
N	1.7%	3.6%	6.3%	6.8%	5.0%
O	1.9%	14.0%	9.2%	5.4%	2.8%
P	6.5%	2.2%	3.2%	2.4%	2.7%
Q	0.8%	0.2%	0.0%	—	—
R	4.7%	9.7%	7.5%	6.0%	8.8%
S	13.9%	0.8%	3.5%	6.5%	1.9%
T	6.3%	2.8%	5.7%	5.5%	9.2%
U	1.6%	8.6%	6.3%	3.5%	0.2%
V	1.7%	0.6%	2.2%	1.7%	—
W	3.5%	1.7%	1.4%	0.9%	0.6%
X	0.0%	0.6%	0.9%	0.1%	0.4%
Y	0.4%	0.9%	1.2%	0.2%	16.4%
Z	0.2%	0.1%	0.8%	1.0%	0.3%

Most common letters (overall)

49.1% of answers

38.6% of answers

34.2% of answers

29.7% of answers

27.8% of answers

27.0% of answers

25.7% of answers

24.7% of answers

22.4% of answers

21.7% of answers

How these letter frequencies work

This explorer uses the official Wordle answer list only. For each 5-letter answer, we track which letters appear at all and how often they appear in each of the 5 slots. The overall chart counts how many answers contain a letter at least once; the position heatmap shows how often that letter appears in a specific slot.

How to use this with starter words

Good Wordle starters tend to do two things: cover several high-frequency letters and place them in slots where they are actually common. The comparison panel lets you enter two candidate starters and see, in a rough way, how much of the highly-used alphabet and positions they touch. Words that spread out across common consonants and vowels tend to get more information per guess.

This is not a full entropy calculator or solver. Instead, it is a human-readable way to sanity-check starter options like SLATE, CRANE, TRACE, or SOARE, and understand why they show up so often in strategy discussions.

Wordle Letter Frequency & Starter FAQ

Does this tool tell me the single best starter word?: No. There is no single perfect starter for every situation, and different metrics favour different words. This tool focuses on simple coverage: how many common letters and positions a word touches. It is meant to help you compare reasonable candidates, not crown an absolute winner.
Why do you use the answer list instead of all guesses?: We care most about letters that appear in actual Wordle answers, not obscure guess-only words. Using the answer list keeps the charts focused on the patterns that matter for solving real puzzles.
What does the coverage score mean in the comparison?: The coverage score is a simple weighted sum of how often each letter in your starter appears overall and in its specific slot. Higher scores mean the starter spends more of its five letters on high-frequency positions. It’s not a probability of winning, just a quick way to gauge information density.
Can I use non-answer words as starters here?: The comparison panel only scores words that are valid answers in the official list. That keeps the data clean and avoids over-valuing weird guess-only words that you might not want to play anyway.