Thrice?
Twice. Lapsus lumbrical. Still a hard word.
I was using “adieu” 4 out of 5.5 vowels 
But now I use *ight . Eight gives you two vowels, but sight gives you two very common consonants and two very common dipthongs.
But mostly I started using that combo because the ght ending tripped me up. Might as well elimate my weakness early on.
I had generally been starting with
IRATE
LOCUS
HYMEN
GAPED,
but lately I’ve been going with
HAIRY
STONE
CLUMP
GAWKS
The leading S is good. The first three words have no repeat letters — also good, and they knock off 15 letters. With GAWKS I’ve knocked off 18 letters that gets all vowels and 13 of the most frequent consonants. It’s been working well so far.
I’ve gone to just picking whatever random word comes to mind that has five different letters, and preferably sprinkled with “fun” letters. I do my best now not to repeat initial guesses I’ve used. I’ve gotten bored of the systematic approach I started with (either going the ADIEU/PORTS route or starting with CRANE or STARE. Some days I play with hard mode in mind (but not officially selected); other days I don’t. I think hard mode hems you in too much when you get four letters and have a bunch of possibilities for the fifth letter, and it becomes 100% guessing game at that point.
Yes I agree, hard mode can lock you down too much.
I’m going to stay with the systematic approach for now. My goal is to get to 100 straight. I’m at 69 now.
HAIRY
STONE
CLUMP
GAWKS
These eliminate 18 letters.
I started playing Wordle shortly after my beloved cat Caper passed away, so I’ve been using her name as my starting word for every game, and I’ve yet to lose. So clearly she is helping me out 
Ive just started playing, and I find half the fun is choosing that first new word, it seems to warm up my brain for the game. It’s the first thing I do upon waking after hitting snooze on the alarm. Then it’s like a word scramble forming 5 letter words from the remaining letters. I can usually solve it before the snooze alarm goes off again.
ARISE is what I use
Still using
STAIN
CHORE
LUMPY
No failures yet! I did blow Quordle once though, using them.
I’m going to start using AIERY, followed by LOTUS. I think it’s better to eliminate vowels. I am convinced, however, that sometimes it just comes down to luck. You cannot always be guaranteed to win, regardless of your strategy. Remember VIVID? That was a tricky one.
Or how about this example: let’s say your very first guess is
BATCH, and this resulted in 
.
I’d be think okay this is easy. So then I go with
CATCH —> … then
HATCH —>
LATCH —>
MATCH —>
That’s 5 guesses down and only 1 remaining. So what’s your next play? Is it PATCH? Or is it WATCH? Flip a coin, it’s 50-50 at that point. Remember, this was all predicated on the first guess being BATCH which is not likely to be the case.
So far I’m at 100%, 70 for 70. And I’m trying to make it to 100!
That’s only an issue on hard mode. But do play on hard mode so it’s a valid concern for me as well.
I think optimum play would be to really consider every single one of your guesses to ensure that you don’t lock yourself into that position. So you should absolutely never guess BATCH as your first word, or even as your third word unless you’ve already eliminated several of those other letters.
So if I’m considering BATCH, maybe I first play CLAMP to eliminate CATCH, LATCH, MATCH, and PATCH.
I will probably never think that hard about Wordle. I’ve just gotten lucky so far that I haven’t lost my streak to that scenario.
See, my approach is entirely different. To me, the game is as much about what the word isn’t as what it is.
Except for once or twice (that I regret), my starting word is always IRATE. This proves or eliminates 3 vowels as well as two of the most common consonants.
The second word is dictated by the results of the first. If I hit a vowel, what is known about its position in the word? How does that vowel fit with common consonant combinations, such as ‘CH,’ ‘SL’, ‘TH’ and so on? Today’s word, e.g., the known vowel had to be placed in the second position, because after my second guess I knew it wasn’t in the third position. I’d also eliminated ‘SH’ as a potential combination. This elimination meant that ‘CH’ was also unlikely.
There aren’t that many words that end in ‘RN’ with ‘O’ in the second position. Once I structured that in Notepad, the answer became obvious quite quickly.
I play in ‘Hard’ mode because I find it easier! It keeps me from making guesses that are sure to be wrong.
I agree, @Bullitt, that scenario would be hard to overcome. It’s just luck of the draw at that point.
I’m also at 100% but have only played 44 games. My stats are ok but nothing to bark about:
1 = 0
2 = 1
3 = 16
4 = 19
5 = 5
6 = 3
It’s still fun. 
Your stats are better than mine. I’m at 97% because I lost one early on, but my current streak is 59.
1 = 2 (these are both times I got spoiled in the main Wordle thread by somebody playing the next day’s game - I’m not going to sacrifice my streak on somebody else’s account)
2 = 3
3 = 17
4 = 19
5 = 15
6 = 8
However, I always start with a different word so I would expect my average to be worse than somebody making optimal opening moves.
Yeah I’m having fun with this game too. Thanks again to @Briny_Deep for bringing the game to us back on 12/24.
I got some “cool factor” points 
from my son at the end of December when I told him that I found a fun game that I started playing, to which he replied, “Don’t tell me you’re playing Wordle?! YOU’RE playing Wordle?!!!”
He has no idea how cool I am! (haha)
Here are my stats so far and they look similar to the others.
1 — 1, same here @Johnny_Bravo, I got spoilered and I’m NOT losing my streak to that!
2 — 1, sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good
3 — 13
4 — 24
5 — 22
6 — 9
Italics mine. Excellent points!
When i say “Its just Mastermind for words”…anyone under 40 looks at me funny.
Past results are not indicative of future performance. Due for more 6’s and one day I’ll make it in one with a lucky new word.
1-0
2-4
3-5
4-7
5-6
6-1
Or “It’s like that gameshow, Lingo.”
I guess I have a good curve. I’ve played 22 times.
1-0
2-3
3-5
4-6
5-5
6-3
One of the 6’s was the first time I played and was figuring it out as I went along. Another was the vivid one.