Wordle's New Recommended Starting Word Is Slate

thegamer.com:

There’s a new best word to begin your daily Wordle guess. That’s according to WordleBot, the “daily companion” app that analyzes your guesses and gives helpful suggestions. WordleBot previously recommended “CRANE” as the starting word, but now it’s changed that recommendation to “SLATE.”

The reason for that is an update to WordleBot’s answer dictionary that no longer limits its analysis to known Wordle solutions. Besides feeling a little like cheating, it also kinda sucked to have WordleBot put down completely valid answers just because they weren’t part of an entirely invisible list. Now, as per The New York Times’ Josh Katz (via The Verge), WordleBot uses a dictionary of around 4,500 words to analyze guesses.

Related: There's A Wordle For Everyone, And That Kind Of Defeats The Purpose

This WordleBot expansion does a few things. First, it possibly hints at Wordle expanding its library of answers. Second, it changes the recommended starting word. WordleBot now says the best possible start is with “SLATE” on regular mode and “LEAST” on hard mode, as opposed to its previous recommendations of “CRANE” and “DEALT.”

All four are still great starters, so you can still go with any of these if you prefer. But statistically, SLATE is the best one for providing the most information. According to the NYT, about a quarter of Wordle players started today’s word with “CRANE,” so what WordleBot recommends clearly carries some weight.

WordleBot also has a new rating function for the information you gain from your guesses, letting you know how good each guess was. Sadly, WordleBot remains locked behind a paid NYT subscription, making it impossible to access without shelling out a few bucks. Of course, you could always just bookmark