[sloucher]

I started playing an Wordle-like app to get around the one-per-day limitation (I know, sue me), and played probably dozens of rounds per day. I ended up with a simple strategy of always starting with the same 3 words: LAUGH, DIRTY, JOKES which cover all the vowels (and y) and put an S at the end where it's most likely to be found. Generally I can "waste" the first 3 guesses on those words and still find the solution.

Then one day, I typed LAUGH and got 5 greens on the first line! Had to happen eventually, but still...

[unfocussed_mike]

LAUGH, DIRTY, JOKES is good -- but no C/P/M/N which are all much more frequent than G/J/K/Y.

In my experience, Y is rarely difficult to place; it's almost always obvious when you're going to need it.

And you rarely need to think about J at all -- like with Q and Z, it's usually obvious when you need it. (Not many five letter english words have J anywhere apart from the first letter, and the few that do mostly have it in the second, like EJECT, or uncommonly the third, like MAJOR, though it might be more common in loanwords like BIJOU I guess).

[sloucher]

> no C/P/M/N which are all much more frequent than G/J/K/Y

Yep, I sometimes follow up with MANIC or PANIC if I've got too few letters, to test for C/P/M/N