5 letter words ending in H

What is in this list

This list holds 254 words, 0.1% 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 24th largest: “5 letter words with E” leads with 3,876 and “5 letter words ending in UMPY” has the fewest, 5. 1 word that would also fit was left out by this site's blocklist of slurs and explicit words.

Points and vowels

Using this site's letter values, the average word here scores 10.3 points (median 10); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 0.7 points richer. The top scorers are PUJAH (19), QUASH (17), QUOTH (17), QURSH (17). Point for point, PUJAH earns the most per letter: 19 points over 5 letters, 3.8 each. H itself is worth 3 points here.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 26.7% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 1 word is more than half vowels: OBEAH. 10 words have none of them at all, leaning on Y instead — for example CRWTH, GLYPH, LYMPH and LYNCH. Compared with the whole dictionary, the letter most over-represented here is C: 9.3% of the letters, against 4.1% overall.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are S in slot 1 (12.2%), O in slot 2 (18.9%), A in slot 3 (15.4%), C in slot 4 (38.2%), H in slot 5 (100%). 187 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (73.6%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is OO (9 words). The most common three-letter openings are COU- (3, as in COUCH), LAI- (3, as in LAICH), ALM- (2, as in ALMAH).

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is ROWTH, WORTH and WROTH — 3 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 11 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 23 words. 2 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — SELAH becomes HALES, SUBAH becomes HABUS. AARGH is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of ABASH.

43.3% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AIRTH, ALEPH and ALMAH among them); after S, the most useful end letter is Y, which extends 43 words. At the front, S turns 18 words into new ones (COUTH → SCOUTH); A turns 4 words into new ones (BLUSH → ABLUSH); B turns 4 words into new ones (LEACH → BLEACH).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, EARTH is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 40 groups, the largest of which has 55 words left (4.3 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “ends in H, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.