5 letter words ending in U

What is in this list

This list holds 25 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 35th 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 11.2 points (median 10); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 1.6 points richer. The top scorers are KUDZU (19), BIJOU (18), QUIPU (18), HOKKU (16). Point for point, KUDZU earns the most per letter: 19 points over 5 letters, 3.8 each. U itself is worth 2 points here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 50.4% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 11 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are P in slot 1 (24%), A in slot 2 (24%), R in slot 3 (20%), O in slot 4 (20%), U in slot 5 (100%). 20 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (80%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is KK (1 word).

Word play in this list

No two words in this list are anagrams of each other. KUDZU is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel.

88% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (ADIEU, BAYOU and BIJOU among them); after S, the most useful end letter is E, which extends 4 words. None of them can take a single letter in front and still be a word.

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, PRAHU is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 14 groups, the largest of which has 4 words left (3.6 bits of information). The full list is short enough to read in one go: ADIEU, BATTU, BAYOU, BIJOU, CORNU, COYPU, FICHU, FONDU, HAIKU, HOKKU, KUDZU, MIAOU, PAREU, PERDU, PILAU, POILU, POYOU, PRAHU, QUIPU, SADHU, SAJOU, SHOYU, SNAFU, VERTU and VIRTU. Ranked by points it runs from KUDZU (19) down to CORNU (7), a spread of 12 points.