5 letter words starting with U

What is in this list

This list holds 117 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 32th 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 8.9 points (median 8); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 0.7 points leaner. The top scorers are UMIAQ (17), UNBOX (16), UNFIX (16), USQUE (16). Point for point, UMIAQ earns the most per letter: 17 points over 5 letters, 3.4 each. U itself is worth 2 points here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 46.3% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 37 words are more than half vowels. Compared with the whole dictionary, the letter most over-represented here is N: 12.3% of the letters, against 6.8% overall.

Letter by letter

Position by position, the most likely letters are U in slot 1 (100%), N in slot 2 (46.2%), A in slot 3 (12%), E in slot 4 (23.9%), E in slot 5 (13.7%). 91 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (77.8%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is PP (2 words). The most common endings are -ASE (2, as in UKASE), -BAN (2, as in UNBAN), -DER (2, as in UDDER). 12% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is URASE, UREAS and URSAE — 3 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 5 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 11 words. UNCUS is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of UNCUT.

48.7% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (UDDER, UHLAN and UKASE among them); after S, the most useful end letter is E, which extends 7 words. At the front, B turns 10 words into new ones (UDDER → BUDDER); C turns 8 words into new ones (UMBER → CUMBER); P turns 8 words into new ones (UMPED → PUMPED).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, URSAE is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 34 groups, the largest of which has 21 words left (4.4 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “starts with U, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.