Like seemingly everyone in the world, the OnMilwaukee editors have been playing their share of Wordle. It’s been great timing as we plan the second OnMilwaukee Adult Spelling Bee – you can find out more about that here – and while making lists of hard-to-spell words for our Bee, we came up with these 5-letter Milwaukee words that would make strong opening Wordle words.

And no, "beers" was not the only Milwaukee word we came up with.

If you’ve played Wordle, you know that the first word you pick can make or break your ability to solve the puzzle in six tries. (If you haven’t played Wordle, here’s an overview of how to play. But beware: it’s addicting.)

Thus, we chose words that, in most cases, contain five different letters and a mix of vowels and consonants. But remember, it’s not always a bad idea to use a word with two of the same letter. Wordle words of the past have contained the same letters which really confused some people at first (like me!).

Since you can’t use proper nouns in Wordle, we didn’t pick Milwaukee words like Dafoe or Favre. However some words, like bucks for instance, is on the list because it’s a proper noun when referring to the best basketball team on the planet (#bucksinsix), but a regular ol’ noun when referring to male deer.

Admittedly, we took great liberties in declaring some of these words as "Milwaukee words." But every word on this list is somehow Milwaukee related and would make a respectable opening Wordle word. Some of the words are Milwaukee-vague enough to require a little explanation, buy hey, it’s a GAME. So let’s have some fun.

5-letter Milwaukee (and Milwaukee-ish) words to start your Wordle:

• Curds
• Domes
• Yeast
• Brats
• Wurst
• Bucks
• Brave (as in The Milwaukee Braves)
• Cream
• Fried (as in fried fish on Fridays)
• Bowls (as in bowls of custard or a place where bowling takes place)
• Spare (as in the bowling term)
• Bikes (as in Harley-Davidson motorcycles)
• Fests
• Slide (as in the State Fair's big Yellow Slide and Bernie Brewer’s victory slide)
• Beers/brews (as in duh, our most famous five-letter word)
• Bingo
• Beach
• Robin (our state bird and Yount)
• Kraut
• Typer (as in Milwaukee is the birthplace of Christopher Sholes, who invented the typewriter)
• Dairy
• Polka