5 letter words ending in ER

What is in this list

This list holds 362 words, 0.2% of the 172,634 words this site keeps from the ENABLE word list. Every word here has 5 letters, and they average 5 letters by construction — so the interesting differences are in which letters they use. Of the 36 lists in this group it is the 21th largest: “5 letter words with E” leads with 3,876 and “5 letter words ending in UMPY” has the fewest, 5.

Points and vowels

Using this site's letter values, the average word here scores 8.6 points (median 8); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 1 points leaner. The top scorers are JIVER (18), JOKER (18), JIBER (17), JAGER (16). Point for point, JIVER earns the most per letter: 18 points over 5 letters, 3.6 each. ER itself is worth 2 points here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 40.4% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 18 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are S in slot 1 (9.1%), A in slot 2 (25.4%), T in slot 3 (10.8%), E in slot 4 (100%), R in slot 5 (100%). 236 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (65.2%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is EE (11 words). The most common three-letter openings are ABL- (1, as in ABLER), ADD- (1, as in ADDER), AFT- (1, as in AFTER).

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is ALTER, LATER and TALER — 3 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 38 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 81 words. It contains 1 palindrome, read the same both ways: REFER. 16 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — AIDER becomes REDIA, ANGER becomes REGNA, DEFER becomes REFED, DOSER becomes RESOD. CEDER is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of CHEER.

85.1% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (ADDER, AFTER and AGGER among them); after S, the most useful end letter is Y, which extends 23 words. At the front, S turns 45 words into new ones (ADDER → SADDER); C turns 30 words into new ones (AMBER → CAMBER); P turns 26 words into new ones (ADDER → PADDER).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, AIRER is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 15 groups, the largest of which has 136 words left (2.8 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “ends in ER, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.