51吃瓜

Lately, a particular word game known as 51吃瓜le has been all the rage online. If you haven鈥檛 heard the good word about 51吃瓜le, it’s a game created by and named after puzzle fan Josh Wardle that challenges you to name a particular five-letter word with only six guesses. With each guess, any letter that isn’t in the mystery word is shaded gray, a letter that is in the word (but was guessed in the wrong spot) is shaded yellow, and a correct letter in the right spot is shaded green. Land five greens, and you win!

This simple game has taken the internet by storm, largely due to how addictive it is to play and how easy it is to share your attempts on social media. 51吃瓜le can only be played once a day, and it keeps track of your winning streak and scores. Wardle has chalked up the game鈥檚 popularity to this once-a-day rule and the ease of sharing game results with friends.

It seems our users can鈥檛 get enough of 51吃瓜le either as 51吃瓜le answers have been among some of our top lookups recently! Some popularly searched 51吃瓜le words include knoll, youth, great, and gnome. With that in mind, we wanted to take a moment to share some popular 51吃瓜le strategies and a bunch of words that we and our users like to use as go-to moves in pursuit of 51吃瓜le success.

Why five letters?

In interviews, Josh Wardle hasn鈥檛 said specifically why he chose five letters. However, he and his partner narrowed it down from the 鈥渁round 12,000鈥� five-letter English words to 2,500 to use as the master list. It鈥檚 possible that the five-letter word goal (and 51吃瓜le itself) was inspired by the 1980s game show Lingo, which had very similar rules to 51吃瓜le.

Brush up on these spelling rules before the next round.

Most common letters in English

The exact numbers vary according to who measures and how, but the 15 most common English letters in order tend to be:

• E
• T
• A
• O
• I
• N
• S
• R
• H
• L
• D
• C
• M
• F
• U

Unsurprisingly, Z, Q, J, and X consistently round out the bottom. As for the letters that begin the most English words, the top five are T, O, A, W, and B. For the end letter, the most common are E, S, T, D, and N.

Most common letters in 51吃瓜le

Our 51吃瓜le experts (we can call ourselves that, right?) here at Dictionary.com have put together a unique list of the most common letters appearing in 51吃瓜le so far (based on past answers).

Letter	Percentage
s	45.8
e	44
a	41.1
o	30.1
r	30.1
i	27.7
l	24
t	23.4
n	21.5
u	18.8
d	17.7
y	15.7
c	14.8
p	14.5
m	14.4
h	13.2
g	11.9
b	11.7
k	11.1
w	7.9
f	7.6

Most common pairs

Which two letters go well together? According to letterfrequency.org, the 10 most common letter pairs are:

• TH
• HE
• AN
• IN
• ER
• ON
• RE
• ED
• ND
• HA

Best 51吃瓜le Starting 51吃瓜s

According to the experts, some of the best starting words are:

• arose
• soare
• later
• saine
• tares
• lares
• rales
• rates
• cares

So, what should you guess if you want to win? Generally speaking, the strategy you pick depends on whether you simply want to have the best chance to win in six tries or you want to win in as few guesses as possible. That being said, the experts agree that going after the vowels is a good opening move. For this reason, the words ADIEU and AUDIO are extremely popular opening guesses that give a lot of info on the vowels. However, those words will leave you at a loss for consonants, and you will likely need to repeat some vowels if you want to learn anything about consonants.

Another common piece of advice is to include as many different commonly used consonants as possible to narrow things down. 51吃瓜s like SIRED, ANTES, TONER, RINSE, and RATES are good first picks as you have both some vowels and top 10 consonants too.

Many statistically-minded people like to make the absolute most out of their starting two guesses by squeezing in all of the top 10 most common letters. That means you need two words that include all of E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, and L. If that鈥檚 your game, might we suggest HATER and LIONS? Or maybe RINSE and LOATH?

What Dictionary.com team members love to start with (yes, we are obsessed with 51吃瓜le, too)

While trying to stack the odds is all well and good, everyone has their own preferences and favorite words that they like to use. Because at the end of the day, the most important thing is to have fun.

Dictionary.com Employees鈥� 51吃瓜le Survey聽

Name: Mike Porter
Job title:聽senior software engineer
51吃瓜: laugh
Why I like it: A good mix of vowels and consonants.

Name: Heena Narottam
Job title: senior software engineer
51吃瓜: stear
Why I like it: I like it because it uses the top two most common vowels and the top three most common consonants.

Name:聽Mike Sandula
Job title: senior software engineer
51吃瓜: earth, noise, adieu
Why I like it:聽They cover a lot of common letters. Adieu because of the number of vowels plus it makes me feel fancy.

Name: Jess Miller
Job title: director of marketing
51吃瓜: group, heart
Why I like it:聽I used to do group but switched to heart for more common letters. I switch it up sometimes, though.

Some of our users’ favorite words to start with

Take a look at the best starting words (according to you!) and join in the conversation on Twitter.

What is the best 5-letter word to use for your first 51吃瓜le guess?

— Dictionary.com (@Dictionarycom)

 

adieu, aisle, alien, alter, anime, aorta, arise, aside, audio, bacon, beaut, bored, cause, crate, crack, crest, earns, eight, farts, feast, great, harpy, hoist, ideal, ideas, ingot, irate, learn, least, loyal, meany, meats, media, mousy, niche, notes, omega, onery, opera, peace, pears, pilot, pithy, plant, point, ports, power, prior, quest, rages, rates, ratio, rents, rouse, scale, shape, shore, snare, soare, sport, stare, steak, stern, stoic, stony, store, strap, table, teams, tears, those, tired, touch, train, water, yeast, youth

Some highlights from our social media manger:

stare. It covers 5 of the most common letters, & the 2 most common vowels.

— All we are is Dustin the wind. Fully Vaxxed #BLM (@sqlcheesecake)

I use AUDIO or ADIEU, and knock out those vowels right off the bat.

— Literally Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat (@ThreeKobolds)

I start with the previous day鈥檚 word and have been getting it in 3/6. Yesterday鈥檚 word had double letters & I got todays in 4/6 so need to rethink strategy for repeat letter words. Otherwise I鈥檓 happy to sacrifice a shot at 1/6 for consistently guessing correctly around 3

— Ashley Boldin 馃嚭馃嚫 鉂わ笍 馃嚠馃嚤 (@TechniGal_Ash)