Thinking about VOWELS could help you solve GuessWord in record time – so what is YOUR winning approach to uncovering the mystery word?

What is your strategy to solve GuessWord?

In our popular puzzle, players have six chances to guess a five-letter word, but there could be thousands.

The player’s goal is to complete that list as quickly as possible, and smart strategies can reduce the number of guesses and the time it takes them to land on the solution.

Last week we revealed that the average player can solve the puzzle in 2 minutes and 40 seconds, and the leaderboards indicate that around five percent can solve the puzzle in less than a minute.

A basic approach that can help is to think about the number of vowels in your starting word.

The word ‘AUDIT’ contains three vowels, allowing the player to confirm or eliminate large numbers of words and solve the puzzle as quickly as possible. Initial words with fewer vowels are less useful for shortening the list of possible five-letter words

GuessWord is unique from other interpretations of the five-letter puzzle in that it offers players a starting letter that can appear anywhere in the mystery word.

While that’s an advantage in some ways, it also forces the player to think a little harder about what word they use to start the game.

A well-known principle is that because vowels appear more prominently in English words, players are wise to exclude as many as possible early on.

After all, GuessWord is an elimination game, so the faster players can eliminate words, the faster they can solve the problem. Knowing which vowels are and are not in the mystery word will therefore lead them to the solution more quickly.

For example, on Friday’s GuessWord, players knew from the start that the letter “D” was somewhere in the mystery word.

An initial word like ‘AUDIT’ with three vowels is probably much more useful than, for example, a word like ‘DODGY’ with one.

Eliminating the possibility of consonants in the word is useful, but often excludes fewer words.

The average GuessWord player will need about 2 minutes and 40 seconds to solve the puzzle

DailyMail.com has launched its FREE new puzzle page this month, packed with number and word puzzles, quizzes and crosswords.

GuessWord has quickly become a fan favorite, with readers across the country rushing to identify the six-letter mystery word in record time.

The top 5 percent of players complete the game in less than a minute.

On average, only 1 percent of players can complete the puzzle in less than 30 seconds. At the other end of the spectrum, only 7 percent need more than six minutes.

Do you have winning strategies? Email neirin.gray@mailonline.com to share.