Are you one of the literally hundreds of people who emailed me asking for my Wordle start words?

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I had no idea so many people would ask. Maybe I should have put them behind a paywall! But that seemed excessive …

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However, I had a few people even say, “Fine, I’ll subscribe for a paid membership if you’ll share the words!”

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In case you’re interested to know how they’d do that, here’s how. See this button or this fill-in field right here?

You fill that in, and it should take you to the upgrade page. (Thank you to everyone who has already done this.)

Note: I’m not going to require people to sign up for a subscription to a newsletter just to get a few words. This is just how you’d fill this out if I had required it!

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I am going to put them at the bottom of this page, though, so I don’t ruin the game for anyone who stumbled across the page.

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OK. Ready? Here’s my strategy:

1. Rule number 1 is to knock out the vowels first. The English language has 6 vowels: A, E, I, O, U “and sometimes Y.”

2. From the start, people have shared “ADIEU” as a way to check the box for four of them. I don’t really use it however, because it’s so common. Also, is “adieu” an English word, really?

3. So, I have two opening strategies: AUDIO, followed by either PERKY, PESKY, or PESTY, depending on what the opening play reveals. (From there, if the puzzle is still puzzling, my follow-on words are usually chosen from among WRONG, CLIMB, WRING, WRANG, BENCH, MUNCH, or MONTH.)

4. My alternative opening strategy, just to do something different, would be ASIDE, followed by either YOUTH or YOUNG, again depending on what the opening play suggests.

5. From there, often enough, you can solve the puzzle immediately.

6. Overall, I find Quordle to be the most challenging, followed by Dordle and Octordle, with the original Wordle and the 16-at-once Sedecorcle tied for easiest. This is all because of the ratio of “guesses allowed to puzzles to solve at once.”

You know what? It turns out that I’m pretty good at Wordle, but I’m apparently not so good at monetizing newsletters.

So, one last plug: In case this was useful but you haven’t yet subscribed, before I head out on vacation, why not click that beautiful blue link!

P.S. This just in! Apparently the NYT actually suggests first words: SLATE (previously, CRANE). (The Verge, NYT)

P.P.S. Learn something new every day. Some of you probably know this, but there’s a NYT WordleBot that breaks down every game. (NYT)