3 letter words with Z

What is in this list

This list holds 20 words, under 0.1% of the 172,634 words this site keeps from the ENABLE word list. Every word here has 3 letters, and they average 3 letters by construction — so the interesting differences are in which letters they use. Of the 16 lists in this group it is the 15th largest: “6 letter words with A” leads with 6,569 and “4 letter words with Q” has the fewest, 16.

Points and vowels

Using this site's letter values, the average word here scores 11.8 points (median 12); words of the same lengths across the whole list average 6.6, so this list runs 5.2 points richer. The top scorers are ZAX (17), WIZ (14), ZEK (14), BIZ (13). Point for point, ZAX earns the most per letter: 17 points over 3 letters, 5.7 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 40% of the letters, against 38% across the whole list. 4 words are more than half vowels: AZO, ZEE, ZOA and ZOO.

How the words are built

Z opens 12 words (60%), closes 7 and sits inside the other 1. 2 words have a doubled letter (10%); the most common doubles are EE (1), OO (1).

Word play in this list

The biggest anagram family here is AZO and ZOA — 2 words from the same 3 letters. Altogether 1 set of anagrams sits inside this list, covering 2 words.

50% of these words take an S on the end and stay a word (ZAG, ZAP and ZED among them); after S, the most useful end letter is E, which extends 2 words. None of them can take a single letter in front and still be a word.

Using this list

The full list is short enough to read in one go: ADZ, AZO, BIZ, COZ, FEZ, FIZ, LEZ, WIZ, ZAG, ZAP, ZAX, ZED, ZEE, ZEK, ZIG, ZIN, ZIP, ZIT, ZOA and ZOO. Ranked by points it runs from ZAX (17) down to ZOO (10), a spread of 7 points.