5 letter words ending in IE

What is in this list

This list holds 47 words, under 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 34th 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 9.2 points (median 9); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 0.4 points leaner. The top scorers are PYXIE (17), ZOWIE (16), MOXIE (14), PIXIE (14). Point for point, PYXIE earns the most per letter: 17 points over 5 letters, 3.4 each. IE itself is worth 2 points here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 61.7% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 45 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are C in slot 1 (12.8%), O in slot 2 (38.3%), R in slot 3 (14.9%), I in slot 4 (100%), E in slot 5 (100%). 28 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (59.6%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is OO (2 words). The most common three-letter openings are AER- (1, as in AERIE), AGG- (1, as in AGGIE), BEL- (1, as in BELIE).

Word play in this list

No two words in this list are anagrams of each other.

85.1% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AERIE, AGGIE and BELIE among them); after S, the most useful end letter is D, which extends 7 words. At the front, B turns 2 words into new ones (AGGIE → BAGGIE); F turns 2 words into new ones (AERIE → FAERIE); A turns one word into a new one (UNTIE → AUNTIE).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, DOGIE is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 11 groups, the largest of which has 20 words left (2.6 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “ends in IE, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.