Best starting words for 3 letter Wordle
These suggestions come from counting the letters in all 370 possible answers in the 3-letter edition of 128ordle. They are the words that test the most common letters in one turn.
The most common letters
The share of answers that contain each letter: A (31%), E (24%), O (22%), T (20%), I (17%), R (16%), N (15%), P (14%).
At the other end, Z, V, X, J almost never appear. An opener that includes them wastes a tile.
Recommended starting words
These words have no repeated letters and cover the most common ones: ATE, EAT, TEA, ARE, EAR, ERA, APE, PEA.
The top word, ATE, finds 0.7 of its three letters in an average answer. Every word here is also a possible answer, so now and then one will solve a board outright.
A strong second word
After ATE, try NOR. It shares no letters with the first word. Together they test 6 different letters and find 1.3 letters in an average answer.
On large puzzles, two openers are usually enough. A third word that solves nothing spends one of your few spare guesses.
First and last letters
Answers most often start with S (8%), P (7%), A (7%) and most often end with T (13%), E (10%), N (10%).
Most answers are consonant, vowel, consonant: CAT, DOG, SUN, PEN. A few start with a vowel (ARM, EGG, OWL) and a few end in one (SEA, TOE, ZOO).
How this was worked out
Each letter is scored by how many answers contain it, and each candidate word by the total for its letters. Only words without repeated letters are considered. The whole answer list is used, never the answers for a particular day.