5 letter words starting with A

What is in this list

This list holds 497 words, 0.3% 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 16th 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 8.5 points (median 8); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 1.1 points leaner. The top scorers are ABUZZ (23), AFFIX (18), AJIVA (18), AJUGA (17). Point for point, ABUZZ earns the most per letter: 23 points over 5 letters, 4.6 each. A itself is worth 1 point here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 47.4% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 190 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are A in slot 1 (100%), L in slot 2 (13.9%), I in slot 3 (14.3%), E in slot 4 (17.9%), S in slot 5 (23.3%). 278 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (55.9%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is LL (10 words). The most common endings are -ING (5, as in ACING), -IDE (4, as in ABIDE), -ONE (4, as in AGONE). 22.7% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is ALERT, ALTER and ARTEL — 3 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 32 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 68 words. It contains 1 palindrome, read the same both ways: ALULA. 4 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — AIDER becomes REDIA, AIRTS becomes STRIA, ANGER becomes REGNA, ARRIS becomes SIRRA. AARGH is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of ABACA.

45.5% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AALII, ABACA and ABAKA among them); after S, the most useful end letter is D, which extends 24 words. At the front, M turns 38 words into new ones (ACHES → MACHES); R turns 27 words into new ones (ACING → RACING); C turns 25 words into new ones (ABLES → CABLES).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, ALIEN is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 47 groups, the largest of which has 91 words left (4.5 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “starts with A, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.