Find words when you know some letters
- 1Type your guess, press Add.
- 2Tap tiles to match your game’s colours.
- 3Read the words that still fit.
Agreen = right spotAyellow = wrong spotAgrey = not in word
Type the word with ? for each letter you don’t know — like C?T.
50 words still fit
Aright spotAwrong spotAnot in word
Example: best words that fit QU???
The number is points: rare letters like Q, Z, J and X score more.
- quaky22
- quaff21
- quiff21
- quack20
- quick20
- quake19
- quark19
- quirk19
- qualm18
- quays18
- query18
- queys18
··
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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.
Popular lists
- Words that end in ING12,553 words
- Words with Q but no U21 words
- Words with no vowels119 words
- 5 letter words ending in ER362 words
- 4 letter words with J97 words
- All 102 word listsBy start, end, length and letter
How the pattern finder works
A pattern fixes the length and some of the letters: in C?T or s??re each question mark (or underscore) is exactly one unknown letter, so the word has as many letters as the pattern. When the pattern is empty you can describe the word another way — what it starts with, what it ends with, letters it must contain (type a letter twice to require it twice), letters it must not use, and how long it is. Every condition you fill in must be true at once.
Results are grouped by length and sorted by points, using the same letter values as the rest of the site. If nothing matches, the line under the box says so; remove one condition at a time to see which one rules everything out.
Read the rest — 6 more sections
Why a length helps
The word list is stored in pieces by length. A search with a length downloads one piece; a search without one has to fetch all fifteen (about 600 KB), which takes longer on a slow connection. Pick a length when you know it. Each piece is kept in your browser for the rest of the visit, so the second search is instant.
Typical uses
Crossword and fill-in grids give you a length and a few crossing letters — that is the pattern box. Rhymes and word endings are the “ends with” box; prefixes are “starts with”. Letters you already know are wrong, as in a guessing game, go in “leave out”. For guesses with coloured feedback, Wordle clues does the bookkeeping for you, including repeated letters.
Worked examples
Typing C?T gives words of exactly three letters that begin with C and end with T. Typing S??RE gives five-letter words that begin with S and end with RE. Leave the pattern empty, set “ends with” to ING and add a length of seven, and you get seven-letter words ending in ING. Fill “must contain” with Q and “leave out” with U and you get the words that use a Q without a U after it anywhere in the word, a short and surprising list. Each added condition can only make the list shorter, never longer.
How conditions combine
The finder uses AND logic throughout. A word must match the pattern, begin with the start letters, end with the end letters, contain every required letter the required number of times, avoid every excluded letter and have the chosen length. There is no OR. If you want words that end in either ER or OR, run the search twice. If a letter is in both “must contain” and “leave out”, nothing can match, and the result line will say so.
Common reasons for an empty result
The most common cause is a pattern whose length disagrees with the length box. A pattern of four characters means four letters, so a length of five contradicts it. The second is an excluded letter that also appears in the pattern. The third is a required letter typed twice when only one slot is free. Clearing conditions one at a time finds the culprit quickly, and it is faster than rereading the rules.
What this tool does not do
It does not solve a crossword clue, because it does not read clues. It does not rank words by how common they are. It does not know proper nouns, hyphenated words, or phrases. It matches shapes against a word list, and picking the right answer is up to you.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a question mark and an underscore?
None. Both stand for exactly one unknown letter. Use whichever is easier to type on your keyboard.
Does a wildcard match more than one letter?
No. Each wildcard is one letter, so the length of the pattern is the length of every word returned.
Can I search without knowing the length?
Yes, using the start, end and contain boxes. The search is slower on first use because it needs every length group, but it works the same way.
Are the results case sensitive?
No. Upper and lower case are treated the same.
Why do some results look unusual?
They are valid entries in the list, many of them old or technical words. Sorting by points puts words with rare letters first, which tends to surface odd words before ordinary ones.