Richard Osman has shared his top tips for Wordle addicts to improve their chances of success at the daily word game.
Wordle has taken the Internet by storm since the start of 2022, with players posting their results in the form of yellow, green and grey squares on social media.
The game, which gives users one round of play to guess the word of the day in six tries, is also a favourite of Pointless co-host Osman, who posts about it often on his Twitter page.
Speaking to presenter Claudia Winkleman on BBC Radio 2, Osman said he has never managed to guess the word of the day on his first try, but said this was very unlikely for most people.
“The way it works is, there’s a list of 2,500 words which could be the Wordle on any given day,” he said.
“They’re the 2,500 most common five-letter words in the English language, so there will never be a word that’s crazy, like we haven’t heard of.”
However, the game’s creator, Josh Wardle, included a much bigger list of 10,000 words that players can take advantage of in order to guess the word of the day.
The author of The Thursday Murder Club revealed that he usually uses the word “aline” for his first try and explained why.
He told Winkleman: “I often start with the word ‘aline’ which is not a word it would ever be, because it’s too obscure, but it’s got three vowels in it and an L and an N, which is quite useful as well, it’s got an E in a very good place.
“You can take advantage of these 10,000 words but know that the actual word will be one that you’ve heard of.”
Winkleman asked Osman what he thought of starting with the word “stare”, to which he replied: “I get it, there’s a couple of vowels in it, but S isn’t used very often as there’s not many plurals, otherwise there would be millions of millions of words.
“S is a red herring,” he added.
The word “adieu” is a popular starting word, but Osman said Twitter would “go crazy” if the word of the day was ever that.
He suggested that the word “audio” would be a good starting word as it helps in “getting those vowels out of the way”.
The House of Games host said guessing the word in one try would be a “fluke” but guessing it in three tries is impressive.
“I’d say getting it in three is a beautiful skill, that’s somebody who you want to have lunch with.
“To get it in three, occasionally you’ll know for a fact it can only be one word, but very, very rarely, so you’ve got to ride your luck to get it in two.
“If you can get your average between three and four you’re doing very well. If it’s between four and five that’s pretty good as well,” he added.
