5 letter words with Z

What is in this list

This list holds 211 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 27th 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 15.1 points (median 14); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 9.6, so this list runs 5.5 points richer. The top scorers are JAZZY (31), FUZZY (26), FIZZY (25), MUZZY (25). Point for point, JAZZY earns the most per letter: 31 points over 5 letters, 6.2 each. Z itself is worth 8 points here, which is why so many of these words outscore their length.

Vowels (A, E, I, O, U) make up 39.3% 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 A: 10.5% of the letters, against 7.6% overall.

Letter by letter

Z opens 51 words (24.2%), closes 15 and sits inside the other 145. 18 words use it more than once, such as ABUZZ, DIZZY, FIZZY and FRIZZ. Position by position, the most likely letters are Z in slot 1 (24.2%), A in slot 2 (23.2%), Z in slot 3 (38.9%), Z in slot 4 (29.9%), S in slot 5 (22.7%). 137 words use 5 different letters with none repeated (64.9%); the rest repeat at least one, and the most common double is ZZ (15 words). The most common three-letter openings are ZIN- (6, as in ZINCS), AZO- (5, as in AZOIC), FUZ- (5, as in FUZED). The most common endings are -ZES (17, as in ADZES), -ZED (11, as in DAZED), -AZE (9, as in AGAZE). 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 ADZES and DAZES — 2 words from the same 5 letters. Altogether 14 sets of anagrams sit inside this list, covering 28 words. AZANS is the longest word here that uses only one kind of vowel, ahead of BAZAR.

44.5% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (AMAZE, AZIDE and AZINE among them); after S, the most useful end letter is D, which extends 16 words. At the front, B turns 7 words into new ones (LAZED → BLAZED); G turns 5 words into new ones (LAZED → GLAZED); A turns 4 words into new ones (BLAZE → ABLAZE).

Using this list

If the answer to a five-letter puzzle is known to be in this list, ZAIRE is the guess that splits it most evenly: its colour patterns divide the words into 55 groups, the largest of which has 17 words left (5.2 bits of information). To narrow it further, open it in the pattern finder: the rule “contains Z, has 5 letters” is already filled in, and you can add a length, a fixed letter position or letters to leave out.