Mike Bostock

Is there an initial word that will work best for most cases?

Fabian Iwand

Hmm, good question… I think PARES is probably pretty good?

P 859 + A 2,263 + R 1,198 + E 2,327 + S 3,958 = 10,605.

SORES (11,144) was the one that the letter frequency with position heuristic prioritized: https://observablehq.com/@iamgrahamallen/wordle-solver-exploration#cell-529

Graham

But SORES will use the same letter twice (S), so, you’ll get back less information than if you chose a different letter? I amend my recommendation to use DARES.

If S ends up being in the final position, you won't know if there's another S among the four other positions unless you guess a word with two in them. There are 717 words with multiple "S" letters in them in this dictionary, and S is the most common first letter and also most common last letter, according to your table below. Maybe I'm not weighing the opportunity cost of info by indexing so highly on position, or maybe position matters more than unique letters?

SOARE is now my definitive favorite, eliminating on average 54% of possible answers.