Says the woman who got it in two just prior to this post. I think you do so well! If I can get it in 2-4 guesses, I'm really happy. On rare occasion, I've gotten it on the first word but that is just pure luck. My lottery tickets should be so lucky. I have about 10-12 starter words. I rotate them according to how I feel that day. Do I really care about getting vowels? I use a word chock full of them. Do I want to use the most popular consonants? I have several I like and choose one. Frequently, my first two guesses are fishing expeditions in which I use 10 different letters, no repeats. I get SO MUCH info from those two words that I frequently get it on the third. That's pretty much my system. I am happy to post all my starter words if people want to see them. I'm sure many people use the same words.
I'm just jealous. And my brain is so scattered (scatter brained) that I don't know if I could keep track of the same starting words, anymore.
I used to have 6 or 7 which contained a lot of vowels, but that's not always the best bet because few words contain mostly vowels. As I said, my starting words have become pretty random, based on mood or whatever.
**sigh**
I guess I should be happy that I rarely miss a word entirely.