Opinion: Wordle - the best word to start the game

Dr David Sidhu - As millions worldwide play the internet game 'Wordle', language researcher Dr David Sidhu (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) delves into some strategies for picking your first word. If you've been on any social media platform in the past two weeks, you've probably seen a grid of green, yellow and black squares. This is the latest pandemic phenomenon called Wordle - a free online game that gives users a new word puzzle each day. It was created by Josh Wardle for his crossword-loving partner. As of January 10, the game has 2.7 million players. In Wordle, players have six tries to guess a target five-letter word. Every time they make a guess, they are told which letters in their guess are in the word and in the correct position (green), and which letters are in it but in a different position (yellow).