Wordle’s upgraded Wordlebot has a new recommended starting word

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A new recommended starting word has been added to WordleBot by the New York Times. It used to recommend CRANE, but now you might want to change your mind.

WordleBot was introduced by the NYT in April as a daily companion to help analyze your Wordle play. One of the biggest changes is that the bot no longer limits its analysis to a subset of five letter words that are known as Wordle solutions. If you guessed a legit word that wasn't one of the Wordle solutions, the bot would have judged you harshly. According to a New York Times post, the bot has its own dictionary of approximately 4,500 words that it thinks players might guess, and it assigns each of them the probability of being a solution.

The recommended starting word has been changed toLATE from CRANE on regular mode and to DEALT from hard mode. If you are playing off the top of your head, SLATE or least are more likely to be your first choice. The New York Times says that CRANE and DEALT are still excellent openers. More than a quarter of WordleBot users started with CRANE today. A rating for information gained from a guess is one of the new statistics added by the NYT.

WordleBot is still only available to Times Games, News, and All Access subscribers, despite the improvements. The new bot could be an attractive reason to subscribe to Wordle. It has good sneakers.