5-letter words with A as the 1st letter and U as the 2nd letter

The A-U opening makes a small, distinctive group: AUDIO and AUDIT are familiar, but many matches are less common. Just five rank among common English words, and AUXIN leads the scoring at 12 points. Check the game dictionary before playing, because the available words differ across lists.

The A-U pattern at a glance

• Collins includes all 25 matches; ENABLE and NWL2023 each include 20.
• Five words in the group rank among the most common English words.
• AUDIO and AUDIT are familiar choices; AUXIN tops the score list at 12.
• Eight words end in S, more than any other final letter.
• Four matches are Wordle answers, and all 25 are allowed guesses.

How many 5-letter words have A first and U second?

There are 25 matches across the tournament dictionaries counted here. That is a compact set beside the 119 five-letter words beginning with B-U. Keeping the first two letters fixed narrows the search quickly, but it also leaves plenty of less familiar options beyond AUDIO and AUDIT.

The final letter gives you another useful filter: eight matches end in S. R appears three times, while C, I, L, and T each appear twice. If your clue fixes the last tile, check that pattern before trying every A-U word.

Which A-U words should you try first?

Start with AUDIO or AUDIT when you want recognizable words; both score 6. AUXIN is the scoring outlier at 12, while AUGHT scores 9 and AUNTY scores 8. The average score is 6.1, so AUXIN is notably above the group’s typical result.

Wordle players have four answers with this opening, out of 25 allowed guesses. The answer count makes the pattern worth checking when A and U are confirmed, but it is not a reason to assume a particular solution. For word games beyond Wordle, dictionary coverage matters: Collins has 25 entries here, compared with 20 each in ENABLE and NWL2023.

Twenty-two matches have definitions, so a few are especially unfamiliar.