The Most Common Letters in Past Wordle Answers

The short answer: S starts more recorded answers than any other letter. E and Y are the most common final letters. J, Q, X and Z appear much less often.

That does not mean you should always play the five most common letters. A useful guess tests letters that work well together and pays attention to position. Once you have feedback, the clues on your board matter more than any historical average.

How we tested this

We counted letters in 1,884 distinct answer spellings recorded from 19 June 2021 to 7 September 2026. Each spelling counts once, even if the answer appeared on more than one date. A doubled letter still uses two letter slots, but it counts as one word in the “words containing this letter” measure. This is a description of past answers, not a prediction of future choices.

Want to compare a particular letter? The table below gives the leading and rarest letters, and the downloadable data includes all 26.

Position changes the picture

A letter can be common overall but unusual in one slot. In position one, S leads with 278 answers, about 14.8% of the set. C comes next with 165, followed by B with 142.

The final slot has a different pattern. E ends 372 answers and Y ends 262. Together, those two letters fill 33.7% of all final slots in this archive.

If we ignore position, the five busiest letters are E, A, R, O and T. At the other end, V appears 129 times, Z 36, X 33, Q 27 and J 22 times.

Two counts that answer different questions

Letter appearances count every slot. In SPEED, E contributes two appearances. Words containing a letter ask only whether the word contains it, so SPEED contributes one word containing E.

By the second measure, E occurs in 884 of the 1,884 distinct completed answer words, or 46.9%. This article counts each distinct spelling once. That differs from the rolling completed-puzzle letter-frequency feed, which counts every puzzle appearance, so repeats contribute again there.

Turn the count into a decision

1. On the first turn, cover several common letters. Five different letters usually teach you more than an early double.
2. Use position as a clue. A common ending can help you build a shortlist, but it should not override green and yellow tiles.
3. Change course when the board speaks. J, Q, X and Z are weak blind tests, but any of them becomes valuable when the feedback points that way.

Frequency is only one ingredient. A full opener score also measures how letters occur together and how evenly a guess splits the answer list.

Common-letter guesses tend to test more likely answers. The Opener Lab measures complete feedback patterns, while the word finder lists words matching the clues you already have.

Sources and reuse: this render is bound to current-data snapshot current-2026-09-07-3d47e96c14e42803, covering globally completed puzzles through 2026-09-07. Download the exact distinct-word rows or charts below. See the research-data catalog, request a correction, or use the social preview card.