5 letter words with U and P

What is in this list

This list holds 226 words, 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 25th largest: “5 letter words with E” leads with 3,876 and “5 letter words ending in UMPY” has the fewest, 5. 1 word that would also fit was 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 10.8 points (median 10); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 1.2 points richer. The top scorers are JUMPY (22), JUMPS (19), PUJAH (19), JULEP (18). Point for point, JUMPY earns the most per letter: 22 points over 5 letters, 4.4 each. U and P together are worth 5 points here.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 34.6% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 17 words are more than half vowels.

Letter by letter

In 112 of them U comes before P; in the other 114, P comes first. 137 words put the two side by side, like AMPUL, CAPUT, COUPE and COUPS. Position by position, the most likely letters are P in slot 1 (42%), U in slot 2 (47.8%), U in slot 3 (27.9%), P in slot 4 (21.7%), S in slot 5 (27.4%). 176 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (77.9%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is PP (6 words). The most common three-letter openings are PUN- (10, as in PUNAS), PUR- (10, as in PURDA), SPU- (10, as in SPUDS). The most common endings are -UMP (12, as in CHUMP), -MPS (10, as in BUMPS), -UPS (7, as in COUPS). 27.4% end in a single S — mostly plurals and verb forms of shorter words.

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is DRUPE, DUPER, PERDU and PRUDE — 4 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 29 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 66 words. 2 words turn into another real word when spelled backwards — PURIS becomes SIRUP, SIRUP becomes PURIS. BUMPH is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of BUMPS.

47.3% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AMPUL, BUMPH and CHUMP among them); after S, the most useful end letter is Y, which extends 13 words. At the front, C turns 8 words into new ones (HUMPS → CHUMPS); S turns 8 words into new ones (LUMPS → SLUMPS); T turns 4 words into new ones (HUMPS → THUMPS).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, PULES is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 52 groups, the largest of which has 25 words left (4.9 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “contains U and P, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.