5 letter words with O and U

What is in this list

This list holds 282 words, 0.2% 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 23th 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 9.6 points (median 9); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list scores the same as the dictionary. The top scorers are JUMBO (20), JOUKS (19), BIJOU (18), BUXOM (18). Point for point, JUMBO earns the most per letter: 20 points over 5 letters, 4 each. O and U together are worth 3 points here.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 46.1% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 82 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

In 207 of them O comes before U; in the other 75, U comes first. 169 words put the two side by side, like ABOUT, AFOUL, ALOUD and AMOUR. Position by position, the most likely letters are S in slot 1 (9.9%), O in slot 2 (51.4%), U in slot 3 (39%), U in slot 4 (27%), S in slot 5 (22%). 244 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (86.5%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is FF (2 words). The most common three-letter openings are ROU- (12, as in ROUEN), LOU- (10, as in LOUGH), MOU- (10, as in MOUCH). The most common endings are -OUT (12, as in ABOUT), -USE (9, as in BOUSE), -UND (8, as in BOUND). 22% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is ROUST, ROUTS, STOUR, TORUS and TOURS — 5 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 40 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 91 words. 2 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — MUTON becomes NOTUM, NOTUM becomes MUTON.

59.9% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AMOUR, AUDIO and BAYOU among them); after S, the most useful end letter is D, which extends 17 words. At the front, C turns 9 words into new ones (HOUSE → CHOUSE); S turns 9 words into new ones (COUTH → SCOUTH); A turns 7 words into new ones (BOUND → ABOUND).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, TORUS is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 52 groups, the largest of which has 35 words left (4.8 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “contains O and U, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.