Last Wednesday, 31 December 2025, the solution to the daily Wordle puzzle was SIREN. I attempted the puzzle for the 900th day in a row and got it in one. Siren has been my starting word for most of those 900 games. My first three attempts are usually Siren, then About, then Lymph. That gives me all 5 vowels (plus Y), all the letters from the word RETAINS, and 15 different letters in total. I knew that Resin and Risen have both been Wordle solutions before and Siren had not.

On New Year’s Day I spent over 45 minutes going through the list of “Past Wordle answers” on this page from TechRadar.com. I wanted to find a word that is as useful a starting-point as Siren has been, but has not yet been an answer. I started two lists on an A4 sheet: Words that have not been used yet, and Words that have.

The former list includes: Rites Tears Tiers Arose Fount / Abort Quire Roast Ingot Lymph // Aired Tours Routs Burst Tones / Unity Oiled Plume Truce Gains // Hymns Tango

The second list included: Train Inert Inter Untie Unite / Count Nurse Arise Raise Irate // Naive Inane Quite Quiet Stone / ABOUT SIREN Resin Risen Rhyme // Count House Aisle Lumpy Stare / Quart Waist Court Outer Route // Mouse Louse Lousy Rouse Snout / Snort Burnt Guard Moult Unify // Unfit Until Unlit Noise Dingo / Lingo Tunic Daunt

[Each forward slash in those lists indicates a set of 5, “//” indicates 10, so as you can see they contain 22 and 48 words respectively.]

I have so far failed to find words to take the place of my preferred three starting words that meet the same criteria: 15 different letters, the letters from the word Retains, all 5 vowels (plus Y) and a starting word that has not previously been an answer. Well, that’s not strictly true. If I start with LYMPH I can stick with the same three starting words and still have a chance of getting it right first time, but it is not as useful as words containing 2 or 3 vowels.

At some point LYMPH will be a Wordle solution. According to this wordlehints page, “Wordle has 12,966 valid five-letter words. Out of which, 2,309 words are official answers. 10,657 are available to use as guess-only words … Wordle will end in October 2027, unless NYT adds new words”. The first five words of this year have been Fable, Proof, Sitar, Posse and Filly. Of those, Sitar would have been the most useful starting-point: 2 vowels, and all 5 letters are in the word RETAINS. Proof, Filly and Posse would never be starting options for me, because of their repeated letters.

You might think, from the paragraphs above (and the fact that I spent the best part of an hour on New Year’s Day creating two lists of words), that Wordle occupies more of my time than it should. Until now, it hasn’t. I usually complete the puzzle within 2 minutes shortly after midnight and only think of it again when other members of my family attempt it. By then I have often forgotten what the word was. If I can remember it I have to be very careful not to give any hints. Blurting out the answer would cause a whole lot of trouble. Hmm, BLURT. Has that been a Wordle answer before? Yes, on Friday 5 November 2021, before I had even looked at wordle.com.