All word lists

How these lists were chosen

A list gets a page when its search is one Google suggests among the top ten for that kind of phrase — for example “words that start with q” is suggested when you type “words that start with”, but most other letters are not — and when the word list has at least five words for it. Searches with fewer than five answers, such as words that end in Q, are left to the pattern finder, which answers any combination.

How the lists are grouped

Lists are gathered into families so that you can find the right one by what you already know. If you know how a word begins, go to the “starts with” family. If you know how it ends, use the ending family. If you only know how long it is, use the length family. The letter families collect words that contain a hard letter such as Q, Z, X or J, and the five-letter family is meant for guessing games. Each family is a way of cutting the same word list, so the same word will often appear in several of them.

Reading the counts

The number under each list is how many words in the filtered word list satisfy that list's rule. It is not a measure of how common the words are in everyday writing, and a larger number does not mean a better list. A short list is often more useful: the words that start with Q are quick to read through and learn, while a list with thousands of entries is better searched than read. When you want to narrow a big list, open the pattern finder and add a condition.

What each list page shows

Every list page opens with the words grouped by length, then the highest-scoring words, then facts calculated from that list: how many words it holds, which letters are most common in it, and related groups such as anagram families or palindromes where they exist. The text on each page is computed from that page's own words, so two lists never share the same sentences. Reading the page is a fast way to get a feel for a group of words before you search it.

Limits of these lists

Every list comes from the same ENABLE word list with the same blocked entries removed, so the limits described on the sources page apply to all of them. A word that is missing from the source is missing from every list. The lists change only when the source or the blocklist changes.

Questions people ask

Why does a letter I expected have no list?

The explanation above covers it: only searches with enough answers get a page. For anything else, the pattern finder answers any combination.

Can I download a list?

The pages are meant to be read on screen. You can copy words from the page, but there is no file download.

Are the lists the official dictionary of a game?

No. They are drawn from a public-domain word list and may differ from the dictionary of any specific game.

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.