Bill Gates shares his Wordle strategy at Abu Dhabi event

Billionaire philanthropist and Harvard dropout says getting the vowels in place first is his top tip

Are you still playing Wordle? Then you must be picking your brains every morning over the best opening word to play.

Thankfully, Bill Gates has a tip or two to help you make your next guess.

The billionaire philanthropist admitted he loves playing the free word game, which has garnered millions of daily followers, at the Catalytic Philanthropy forum organised by Ideas Abu Dhabi, held at New York University Abu Dhabi on Sunday.

Gates suggests using words with as many vowels as possible, such as audio or adieu. “I switch it around from time to time. You really need to get the vowels done.

“There is a lot of debate about it."

Gates, a Harvard dropout who went on to co-found tech giant Microsoft, said he loved to "waste time on those word games. Not much. But [it is] a fun daily pastime.”

Wordle requires players to guess a new five-letter word each day in no more than six attempts. There are no clues and players start with any five-letter word.

The colour of the each letter’s box changes to green, yellow or grey according to how accurate the guess is. Netizens usually take to social media to brag or vent their frustrations from the day's puzzle.

The game is the brainchild of Brooklyn-based software engineer Josh Wardle. He originally created the game in 2013, but his friends weren't keen on the idea.

He still went ahead and did it during the pandemic, as a nod to his partner's love of words, and it then caught on within his family, before he released it to the world in October last year.

It soon became the hottest online word game of 2022 when Wardle posted it on his website.

In February, it was bought by The New York Times Company for an undisclosed sum in the low seven figures. At the time of the takeover, many users complained the puzzle got harder, although it remained free and retained millions of daily players.

Nine online games to play that are similar to Wordle — in pictures

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  'Hello Wordl' is a remake of 'Wordle' and is played in the same way, except you can do it more than once and change the length of the words.

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  'Absurdle' is the 'adversarial variant' of 'Wordle'.

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  'Letterle' is a mischievous spoof game that makes players guess a single letter each day.

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  'Letterpress' is an unlimited, free game where you unscramble tiles to spell words against friends and random opponents.

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  'Word Forward' features a 5x5 grid of letter combinations that you can use to make words.

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  'Kitty Letter' is from the makers of 'Exploding Kittens'.

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  'SpellTower' is like 'Tetris' meets 'Boggle'.

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  'TypeShift' allows players to spell words using sliding letters in columns.

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  'Word Master' is strikingly similar to 'Wordle' except you can play more than one a day.

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  'Wordle' has gone viral and amassed hundreds of thousands of players in a few months. AFP