Words With No Repeated Letters: Best Wordle Openers
Five different letters per guess, scored on the same lists our solver uses.
Five-letter words with no repeated letters make the best Wordle openers because every tile tests something new. On our own common list, LATER, ALTER, ALERT and IRATE light up the most letters, 1.78 per answer on average. Pair ROUTE with SLAIN and two guesses cover the ten most common letters.
How many five-letter words have no repeated letters?
Most of them. As in our double-letter guide, we do not have the game's official answer list, so every figure on this page comes from the lists behind our own tools. In the 2,315-word common list that the Wordle solver treats as likely answers, 1,566 words use five different letters. That is 67.6 percent. In the 12,970-word full list behind our 5-letter word pages, it is 8,321 words, or 64.2 percent.
The shape of those words is predictable. Of the 1,566 common no-repeat words, 944 have exactly two vowels, counting A, E, I, O and U but not Y. Another 504 have one, 112 have three, and five have none at all: CRYPT, GLYPH, LYMPH, LYNCH and NYMPH. Only one has four. It is AUDIO.
Which letters should a no-repeat opener cover?
The common ones, and the ranking is steeper than most people expect. We counted how many of the 2,315 common words contain each letter at least once. E turns up in 1,056 of them, or 45.6 percent. A follows with 909 and R with 837. Then comes a tight pack of six: O, T, L, I, S and N, all between 673 and 550. U is tenth with 457. At the bottom sit J with 27, Q with 29, Z with 35 and X with 37.
Add up those counts for an opener's five letters, divide by 2,315, and you get the average number of its letters that come back yellow or green. We call that letters lit. The table also shows average greens, and how many common words share no letter at all with the opener, the dreaded all-grey row.
| Opener | Letters lit per answer | Greens per answer | All-grey answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROATE | 1.79 | 0.54 | 195 |
| LATER | 1.78 | 0.45 | 196 |
| IRATE | 1.78 | 0.51 | 194 |
| AROSE | 1.77 | 0.54 | 183 |
| STARE | 1.77 | 0.57 | 227 |
| RAISE | 1.76 | 0.55 | 168 |
| SLATE | 1.68 | 0.62 | 221 |
| CRANE | 1.64 | 0.60 | 263 |
| ADIEU | 1.49 | 0.32 | 162 |
| AUDIO | 1.32 | 0.27 | 190 |
Which single words cover the most ground?
Across all 8,321 no-repeat words in our full list, ROATE scores highest. Few people would recognise it. Among words in our common list the leaders are LATER, ALTER and ALERT, which share the same five letters, with IRATE one count behind. Pick IRATE of those four if you want greens too.
The other columns tell a different story. RAISE and ARISE leave just 168 common words all grey, the fewest of any common opener. SLATE lights fewer letters but lands more greens than any of them, because S likes the first slot and E likes the last. CRANE scores lower than its reputation here, since C is only the eleventh most common letter. ADIEU almost never blanks out, but it lights few letters and finds even fewer greens. The starting words guide explains why those small gaps rarely matter.
What are the best two-word combos with ten different letters?
The ten most common letters are E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S, N and U. Two words that use all ten score 3.05 letters lit per answer, the maximum for any pair. We found 13 pairs of common words that do it. ROUTE and SLAIN lands the most greens, 0.98 per answer. TRAIN and LOUSE, and SOLAR and UNITE, are close behind. After any of those pairs, only one word in our common list stays completely grey: PYGMY.
Familiar pairs come close without quite getting there. CRANE then SPILT lights 2.91 and leaves 25 common words all grey. SLATE then MINOR lights 2.98 and leaves 9. One caution: letters lit is a blunt measure. It ignores how the answers split, which is why our second guess numbers, which measure real information, still back SPILT after CRANE.
Is a three-word opener worth it?
It buys certainty, and you pay for it in guesses. The fifteen most common letters are A, C, D, E, H, I, L, N, O, P, R, S, T, U and Y. Three common words can cover all of them, for 3.90 letters lit per answer, and then not one of our 2,315 common words comes back all grey. SHADE, POINT and CURLY lands the most greens. PRICE, SALTY and HOUND does the same coverage with words that are easier to remember.
The cost is three guesses spent before you place anything, which leaves three to finish. It is also a normal-mode habit. In hard mode, any yellow or green from guess one has to be reused, so a fixed second and third word is usually illegal. The hard mode guide covers what to do instead.