I use these two, in Wordle and Quordle and lookalikes:
AUNTY
OSIER (a kind of willow)
That gives me all the vowels, placing Y where it’s most likely to occur, ER where it’s most likely to occur in combination, and U ready for all those damnable – U – - Y words.
For a long while I used ADIEU and STORY, which were pretty good, especially with the S in position 1. Then I went through a series of trials, and finally put my choicest letters into an anagramming program and tried out the results (DAISY ROUTE, UNITY AROSE, SAUTE IRONY) until I got the present pair, which I’ve stuck with for a long time now.
But even with a solid starter pair, I’m tackling the quartet with no finesse and no strategy. For the one-word games, I do have strategies.
@LuckyGuy and @kevbo1, good coverage from your starters. Do you use the same with Wordle? And what is your most common number of guesses?