The statistical secret behind every great opening word — across 7 languages
Every Wordle guess is an information play. You have 6 tries to nail a 5-letter word, and each guess reveals which letters are in the answer (and where). The question is: which letters should you test first?
The answer is hiding in letter frequency data. If E appears in 12.7% of English text, it is far more likely to be in today's Wordle answer than Z (0.07%). By choosing opening words loaded with high-frequency letters, you maximize the information gained from every guess.
This principle works across all languages. Playing Wordle in Spanish? Start with letters like E (13.7%), A (12.5%), and O (8.7%). French? E (14.7%) and S (7.9%) are your best friends. Below, we break down the complete frequency data for 7 languages and show you exactly how to weaponize it.
These openers pack the highest-frequency letters into real 5-letter words. The "coverage score" shows what percentage of all text those 5 letters account for.
Note: These scores measure letter frequency coverage only. Positional frequency (how often E appears in position 4 vs. position 1) and letter uniqueness also matter. Still, starting with high-frequency letters is the single biggest strategic edge you can give yourself.
The deeper the purple, the more frequent the letter. Hover for exact percentages. Use the sort dropdown to reorder by any language.
Playing Wordle in a new language? Compare letter distributions to adjust your strategy.
Apply these letter frequency insights to today's puzzle.
Today's Wordle Answer Play LingleScrabble tile distributions are essentially letter frequency charts cast in plastic. Alfred Butts counted letters in newspapers to decide how many tiles each letter should get and how many points each should be worth. The rarer the letter in natural text, the higher its point value.
Strategic insight: In Scrabble, high-frequency letters (E, A, I, O) are worth only 1 point because they are easy to play. In Wordle, those same letters are your most valuable guesses because they appear in the most answers. Same data, opposite strategies.
Data sources: Frequency data is compiled from large-corpus linguistic studies including Robert Lewand's Cryptological Mathematics, Pavel Micka's Wikimedia corpus analyses, and the University of Leipzig Corpora Collection.
Scope: All 26 base Latin letters (A-Z). Diacritical marks are folded into their base letters for cross-language consistency.
Wordle relevance: Note that general text frequency differs slightly from 5-letter-word frequency. For example, S appears more often in general text (plurals, verb forms) than in 5-letter Wordle answers. Still, general letter frequency is a strong proxy and the foundation of all Wordle-solving algorithms.
Last updated: January 2025