5-letter words with B as the 2nd letter and S as the 5th letter

The pattern is tight: ABBAS, ABYSS, OBEYS, and ABUTS all fit, but only two matches rank among the 25,000 most common English words. The starting letters narrow the search further: ten matches begin with A, five with O, and just one each with E and K. That makes the first letter a useful next filter when you already know B and S.

The pattern at a glance

• All 17 matches put B second and S fifth.
• Collins lists 17; ENABLE and NWL2023 each list 15.
• The average score is 8.1 points.
• Only two matches meet the common-word frequency threshold.

How many 5-letter words have B second and S fifth?

There are 17 tournament-dictionary matches. The starting-letter split is unusually lopsided: A accounts for ten, O for five, while E and K contribute one apiece. If you are narrowing a puzzle, try an A or O first rather than cycling evenly through the alphabet.

The contrast with nearby patterns is striking. With S still fifth, the A-second pattern has 744 matches and the O-second pattern has 707; this B-second set has only 17. That is why a familiar ending alone is not enough to guess broadly.

Try ABYSS or OBEYS as recognizable examples, then check the less familiar entries against your game’s word list.

Which matches score well, and what about Wordle?

KBARS leads the score table at 11 points. ABYSS, OBEYS, and ABYES follow at 10 each, while ABBAS, ABBES, and ABACS score 9. The unusual K gives KBARS its edge; the repeated S in ABYSS does not make it the top scorer.

Exactly one match appears in the Wordle answer list, while all 17 are allowed guesses. Sixteen entries have definitions, so one is not covered by the definition count. Dictionary coverage also varies: Collins includes two more matches than either ENABLE or NWL2023.