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Five-letter word game

The 5 letter word game, and the words behind it

Play a free 5 letter word game, and see what five-letter words actually look like: which letters start and end them, how often one repeats, and why guessing a plural is usually a wasted turn.

5 letter word game: five numbered tiles spelling FIVES

What 1,377 five-letter words look like

E · A · R · S · T The five commonest letters. E is in 49% of the pool — nearly every other word.
S · C · B · T The commonest openings. S alone starts 199 of them.
E · Y · T · R The commonest endings. 245 words end in E — more than one in six.
31% Have a letter twice — 422 words. Far more than most players expect, and the single commonest way a guess is misread.
110 End in S, out of 1,377. Opening with a plural spends a letter on an ending that is rarely there.
Q · J · Z · X The rarest. Q appears in just 13 words, so ruling it out early is worth almost nothing.

What the numbers above are worth in a game

Do not open with a plural

Only about one word in twelve ends in S. An opening guess ending in S spends a whole letter on an ending that is usually not there, and S is a letter you want in play elsewhere — it starts more five-letter words than anything else.

E is worth more than any other letter

It appears in nearly half the pool, and one in six words ends in it. If your opener does not contain an E, it is leaving the single most informative letter untested.

Expect the Repeat

Roughly a third of five-letter words use a letter twice. Most players treat a repeat as a surprise, which is why a second letter coming back grey reads as a bug rather than as the answer telling you there is only one.

Do not spend turns on the rare letters

Q, J, Z and X between them appear in a handful of words. Ruling them out feels productive and eliminates almost nothing — the letters worth testing are the ones that are usually there.

More free word games and tools

Wordle Unlimited Play wordle unlimited free, as many rounds as you like, at four to eleven letters. The practice mode the daily game never gave you, with no one-a-day limit and nothing to sign up to. Wordle Archive Every past wordle puzzle, still playable and still free. Catch up on the ones you missed, or play old wordle puzzles from the very beginning, with no account and no subscription. Mini Crossword A free online crossword in five by five, with real clues written from a dictionary rather than trivia. An easy crossword you can finish in a couple of minutes, new every day. Word Search Word search online at four difficulties, on a grid generated fresh every time so you never meet the same puzzle twice. There are printable word search sheets too if you would rather use a pen. Spelling Bee The spelling bee game with your spelling, not ours: seven letters, one in the middle, and every word you can build from them. A daily spelling bee puzzle plus every hive we have set before it. Boggle Play boggle free on a four by four tray: trace every word you can find through touching letters before the clock runs out. A word grid game that scores longer finds higher. Text Twist Text twist online and free: six letters, and every word they can make, against the clock. A word scramble game where finding the six-letter word opens the next round. Word Ladder A word ladder puzzle: change one letter at a time to get from the first word to the last, and every rung has to be a real word. Solve it in as few steps as you can. Cryptogram Cryptogram puzzles in a letter substitution cipher, in the cryptoquote style. Crack a single letter and it fills in everywhere at once, until the whole quote reads. Hangman The hangman game online, at three to eleven letters. Free hangman with a word list long enough that it will not repeat on you, and the one game everybody already knows how to play. Sight Word Games Sight word bingo on a four by four card: a word is called and your child finds it. Built on the Dolch sight words schools have set since 1936, for the words that cannot be sounded out. Phonics Games Phonics games for children learning to read: sound out CVC words one letter at a time, with the missing sound to find. Phonics practice for kids that speaks the word aloud. Wordle for Kids Wordle for kids, age-banded for five to thirteen at three to five letters. Word games for kids that stay inside vocabulary a child that age actually meets, with no ads during play. Wordle Solver A free wordle solver and wordle helper: enter the letters you have found and where they sit, and see every word still possible. No account, and it never shows you the answer unasked. Word Unscrambler Unscramble words instantly: type your letters and get every word they make, longest first. A letter unscrambler that works on anything from three letters to a full rack. Anagram Solver An anagram solver that uses every letter you give it, not just some of them. Rearrange a word or a name into the real words hiding inside it. Word Finder Find words with letters you already hold, and say where they sit. A word finder tool for a board you are part way through rather than a blank rack. Scrabble Word Finder Every playable word from your Scrabble rack, scored on official tile values and sorted highest first. A scrabble helper for the word you cannot quite see. Words With Friends Finder Your rack scored on Words With Friends tile values, which are not the Scrabble ones, against the dictionary that game actually accepts. A words with friends cheat that knows the difference. Crossword Solver A crossword clue solver for a half-filled grid: give it the letters you have and a question mark for the rest, and see every answer that fits.

Five-letter words, answered

Why five letters?

It is the length where the puzzle is hardest to make trivial and hardest to make impossible. Four letters has too few options to be interesting for six guesses; seven has too many to narrow down reliably in six.

How many five-letter words are there?

Far more than could ever be answers. The accept list holds around eleven thousand five-letter words, and the answer pool is a curated fraction of that — everyday words rather than everything that is technically a word.

What is the best five-letter word to start with?

Anything with five different common letters will do almost as well as the theoretical best. CRANE, SLATE and TRACE are all sound. The gap between them is smaller than the gap between playing your second guess well and playing it badly.

Can I play other lengths?

Yes, four to eleven, as many rounds as you like. Longer words are given more guesses, because six on an eleven-letter word would be a coin toss.

Are proper nouns ever the answer?

No. Names are excluded from the answer pool entirely — being asked to guess somebody's first name is not a word puzzle. They are still perfectly fine to type as guesses.