Guides · 2 November 2026

The best first guess in Leaguedle, worked out from all 173 champions

Every Leaguedle round starts the same way: an empty board and 173 champions who could be the answer. The first guess can’t win on purpose, so its only job is to make the second guess easier. That can be measured. For every champion, we played it as an opener against all 173 possible answers, grouped the answers by the colours and arrows they would show, and worked out how many champions you would still be choosing between on average. Lower is better.

The top openers

The middle of the roster sits around five champions left (Ziggs is the median opener at 5.1). The bottom of the list is far worse: Bel’Veth leaves 15.3 on average, Briar 15.8, and Smolder 16.4, with a worst case of 38 champions still in play after one guess.

Why Irelia works

Irelia is a female, melee, human Magicborn from Ionia who plays Top and Middle, uses mana and came out in 2010. Almost every one of those clues sits where the roster is crowded, which is exactly what an opener wants.

• Top and Middle are the two most common lanes in Leaguedle (48 and 43 champions). Because Position is a list, sharing one lane with the answer turns the tile yellow, so her two lanes split the field three ways instead of two.
• Human and Magicborn are the two most common species (113 and 38). The same yellow logic applies.
• Ionia is the biggest region, with 27 champions.
• 2010 is the sweet spot for the Release year arrow. Champions from 2009 to 2011 make up about half the roster (90 of 173), and Leaguedle turns the tile amber when the answer is within two years, so a 2010 guess separates “around launch” from “much later” in one go.

Lux and Vi score well for the same reason. Lux is a Human Magicborn mage in Middle and Support from 2010. Vi is a melee jungler from Piltover and Zaun released in 2012, close enough to the middle of the timeline for the arrow to do real work.

Why Smolder is the worst opener

Smolder is a ranged Bottom laner, one of only three Dragons (with Aurelion Sol and Shyvana), tied to Camavor and Noxus and released in 2024. Nearly every answer sees the same thing next to him: a red species tile, a red region tile and a release-year arrow pointing down. A clue that looks identical for most answers tells you almost nothing. Sett has a milder version of the same problem. His resource, Grit, is unique to him, so the Resource tile is red for 172 answers out of 173.

How Leaguedle played in its first week

Across Leaguedle’s first week (27 October to 1 November 2026), players finished 142 Classic rounds, solved 139 of them and needed 7.4 guesses on average. That makes it one of the harder games on Bingedle, behind only a handful like Minecraft, Jujutsu Kaisen and Pokémon.

Familiar favourites sit well below the top of the table as openers. Miss Fortune ranks 39th (3.37 champions left), Jinx 64th (3.96), Ashe 63rd (3.96) and Yasuo 19th (3.10). None of them is a bad start, and the difference between 2.3 and 3.4 champions left is about one guess over a few days of play. Irelia is simply the most efficient start the data allows.

Using this without spoiling the fun

The ranking assumes every champion is equally likely to be the answer, which is how Leaguedle picks: the daily champion comes from a shuffled list that can’t repeat until every champion has had a turn. It also assumes you read every tile on the next guess. If you play from memory and instinct, open with a champion you know well instead, since reading your own guess correctly matters more than a fraction of a champion on paper.

Play: Leaguedle