What's the best way to play Wordle? It really depends on what you want from it—to be sure to win; to win in fewer moves; to have fun. There are different strategies that you can apply, but in the end it should just be a fun mental challenge.
A great way to try out your strategy, with some hints along the way, is with the Wordle Helper.
The First Move
Common letters is common places
This is one of the best strategies to ensure an eventual win. Word-game players generally know which letters are
common. In 5-letter words, these are the most to least common letters:
E S A R O L T I N D C U P Y M H B G K F W V Z X J Q
The strategy here is to pick a starting word that will either confirm or eliminate these common letters. A good starting word generally has 2 vowels (E, A, and O in order of preference) and 3 consonants (S, R, L, T, ...). There are also some good 3-vowel words, but these are less common.
Position is important too. Each position in the word has a different order for most common letters.
Here are the top 30 words that use common letters in their preferred position:
Wild guess
Some people like to just take a stab at it. And, there's really no reason not too, after all you might get lucky! In fact, the first guess isn't as important as most people think. You've still got a reasonable chance of hitting at least one letter. On average, over lots of games, this strategy will take you about 0.2 - 0.3 extra moves.
The Second Move
Once you have some information, the strategy changes. At this point, you can use the information you have to make an informed guess, or you can try a word that uses none of the already known letters to try to get more information.
No hits
If none of your letters come up, think about which vowels (AEIOU+Y) you haven't tried and combine them with some of the common consonants that you have not used to make a word.
Use what you know
If you get 2 or more letters, and especially if at least one is in the right place, you stand a pretty good chance of making a good guess at the word. Even just one letter might give you a good clue, especially if it's an unusual letter that has limited places it can go, or commonly combines in certain ways.
Gain more information
If you only got one letter you might be best to try a new word that doesn't contain that letter (or any of the others you tried), in the hope of gaining as much information as possible.
More Moves
After the first two moves you've hopefully limited the remaining possibilities quite a lot. At this point, be sure to use all the information you have. Put the 'correct' letters in their places; try the 'present' ones somewhere else (don't use the same spot!); then think about what other letters can go around them.