This list holds 3,490 words, 2% 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 second largest: “5 letter words with E” leads with 3,876 and “5 letter words ending in UMPY” has the fewest, 5. 5 words that would also fit were 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 9.3 points (median 9); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 0.3 points leaner. The top scorers are JAZZY (31), HAJJI (25), ABUZZ (23), HUZZA (22). Point for point, JAZZY earns the most per letter: 31 points over 5 letters, 6.2 each. A itself is worth 1 point here, so the score comes from the other letters.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 38.6% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 494 words are more than half vowels. Compared with the whole dictionary, the letter most over-represented here is K: 1.9% of the letters, against 0.8% overall.

Letter by letter

A opens 497 words (14.2%), closes 233 and sits inside the other 2,760. 343 words use it more than once, such as AAHED, AALII, AARGH and ABACA. Position by position, the most likely letters are A in slot 1 (14.2%), A in slot 2 (42.3%), A in slot 3 (24.3%), A in slot 4 (18.9%), S in slot 5 (29%). 2,504 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (71.7%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is LL (45 words). The most common three-letter openings are SHA- (30, as in SHACK), STA- (30, as in STABS), BRA- (29, as in BRACE). The most common endings are -ARS (36, as in AFARS), -ATS (34, as in BEATS), -ANS (32, as in ALANS). 28.6% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is APERS, APRES, ASPER, PARES, PARSE, PEARS, PRASE and 5 more — 12 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 676 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 1,803 words. It contains 8 palindromes, read the same both ways: ALULA, KAIAK, KAYAK, MADAM, RADAR and SAGAS. 64 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.

46.2% 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 171 words. At the front, S turns 174 words into new ones (ABLES → SABLES); C turns 92 words into new ones (ABLES → CABLES); B turns 83 words into new ones (ABOON → BABOON).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, SANER is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the sampled words into 80 groups, the largest of which has 114 words left (5.3 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “contains A, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.

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About these lists. Words come from ENABLE, a public-domain word list; a few slurs and explicit words are left out. Letter values are this site's own rule, based on how rare each letter is. Scrabble, Words With Friends and Wordle are trademarks of their owners (Hasbro and Mattel, Zynga, The New York Times); this site is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Sources and limits.