Digit Statistics

A digit can tell you whether it appears in the answer, where it belongs, and sometimes how many copies there are. A useful early guess asks about several different digits.

For example, 1 appears somewhere in 60.8% of answers, 2 in 52.3%, 4 in 47.2%, and 3 in 46.4%. Testing these digits can split the possibilities usefully whether they appear or not. These full-pool percentages change once you have feedback.

That helps explain why the top-ranked openers use six distinct common digits. Our recommended opener reduces the pool from 17,723 modeled forms to about 33 on average; your exact colors determine the actual number left.

This chart describes NerdleBuddy's generated model, not a claim that we possess Nerdle's official answer list. Nerdle says its 17,723 answers were selected from more than 100,000 valid calculations; our model independently applies documented equation constraints so its statistics remain reproducible. See Nerdle's official Classic Nerdle description.

First: leading digits pile up low. The answers contain 33,319 multi-digit numbers, and 1 is the leading digit of 25.0% of them — versus 6.4% for 9. Of all the 1s on the board, 57.8% are sitting in that leading position. That skew comes from this generated equation distribution and its eight-character length limit; it is not, by itself, a demonstration of Benford's law. In the model, 22.9% of two-digit results fall in 10–19, while three-digit values must stay compact enough to leave room for the expression, and 34.4% of them fall in 100–199.

Second: zero is starved by the rules. A number can't start with 0 and a lone 0 can't stand on the left side. Zero can still appear inside a multi-digit number (10, 20, 108…) or as the result, which is why it reaches just 25.2% of modeled answers while every other digit appears in at least 40.6% — see the hidden rules for the full lone-zero story.

Use these frequencies to choose an opener. After that, a confirmed digit or a ruled-out position matters more than its overall popularity. Include zero when your feedback calls for it.