Word lists

Every list is built from three game dictionaries: NWL2023, Collins and ENABLE. A word counts once if any of them accepts it, and badges on each result show which ones do. Pick a length, then narrow by first or last letter, and the familiar words come first.

Word counts by length at a glance

• 281,752 words are valid in at least one dictionary, ranging from 2 letters to 28.
• Nine-letter words lead with 41,930, just ahead of eight letters at 41,364.
• Seven letters holds the most everyday vocabulary: 3,332 common words.
• Five-letter words, the Wordle size, total 12,789, and 2,315 of them are Wordle answers.
• S is the most common first letter at every length from four to eight.

Which word length has the most words?

Nine letters, with 41,930 words, narrowly beats eight letters at 41,364. Ten letters follows at 36,869 and seven letters at 33,788. Five-letter words total 12,789, less than a third of the nine-letter group.

Longer words win because English bolts prefixes and endings onto short roots. A root such as FORM becomes REFORMED and FORMATION, and each variant is its own entry. Inflections multiply the count again.

Past the peak the bars shrink. Fifteen letters holds 6,100 words, and 4,272 words run to sixteen letters or more. The record is 28 letters: ETHYLENEDIAMINETETRAACETATES, a plural chemistry term.

Where do everyday words cluster?

Seven letters, not nine. 3,332 seven-letter words count as common, followed by 3,169 at six letters and 3,003 at eight. Nine letters has only 2,426 common words among its 41,930, about 6%.

Five letters is friendlier than it looks: 2,584 of its 12,789 words, roughly one in five, are common. That makes it the easiest length for spotting a word you already know.

Results open with the words people actually use. Nine-letter lists start with AVAILABLE, EDUCATION and COMMUNITY, not obscure chemistry terms, because frequency sets the order.

Counts alone mislead. A longer list is not a friendlier one, and the seven-letter list feels familiar precisely because so many of its 33,788 entries are words you already use.

Which list should you open for your game?

• Wordle and clones: the 5-letter list, then narrow by first letter once you hold a green.
• Scrabble bingos: the 7-letter and 8-letter lists, which hold 33,788 and 41,364 words.
• Tight board spots: the 2-letter and 3-letter lists, just 126 and 1,333 words.
• Crosswords: choose the length first, then split by last letter if the final square is crossed.
• Vocabulary practice: any length, reading from the top, where common words sit.

How many two- and three-letter words are there?

126 two-letter words and 1,333 three-letter words are valid somewhere. That is small enough to memorise, and it is where close Scrabble games get decided.

The limitation is portability. NWL2023 accepts 107 of the two-letter words and ENABLE only 96. QI and ZA, worth 11 points each, are valid in NWL2023 and Collins but not ENABLE.

ZO and CH are Collins-only, so check your game's word list before you play one. XU is safer: it scores 9 and all three dictionaries accept it.

Q is the hardest tile to place. Only 80 words use Q without U, and short ones like QAT are worth learning before the long ones.

Why do S words dominate every length?

Plural endings push S to the front of the rankings. S opens 490 four-letter words, 1,547 five-letter words and 5,265 eight-letter words, ahead of every other letter at each length from four to eight. Three letters is the exception, where A leads with 93 to S's 90.

The ending side grows faster. Only 108 of the 1,333 three-letter words end in S, about 8%. By five letters it is 3,898 words, or about 30%, and at eight letters 14,500 words, about 35%.

Both ends can be S at once. Among eight-letter words, 1,747 start and end with S, so a rack with a spare S and seven good tiles often hides a bingo.

How are the word lists ordered?

By real-world frequency, with common words first. Of the 281,752 words, 140,142 carry a frequency rank, so the rest sit below them in every list. HOUSE ranks 174th and CRANE 7,899th, so house appears first.

Rank measures familiarity, not value. A word ranked past 150,000 can still be legal and high-scoring, so use the score column when points matter more than recognition. The 5-letter list averages 9.2 points per word.

The Finder narrows a list by letters and positions when a length alone is too broad. Pairing a length with a known first or last letter cuts even the largest list down to a manageable size.

How do 5-letter words split by first letter?

S leads the five-letter list with 1,547 words, about 1.7 times C at 914, with B at 887 and P at 845. Vowels open far fewer: E starts 298 and I only 164.

The bottom is tiny. X starts just 15 five-letter words, among them XENON and XYLEM, and Q starts 79. Those lists fit on one screen.

Inside the S list, T is the commonest second letter with 180 words, ahead of A with 162 and H with 149. Clusters like ST and SH beat most vowel pairings.

Using the word lists by length