5-letter words with E as the 2nd letter and P as the 3rd letter

E and P lock together into a _EP_ frame, and that frame leans hard on a few openings: R starts 10 matches, S starts 7 and T starts 5. DEPTH, DEPOT, REPLY, REPEL and REPAY are the everyday five. Close to a quarter of the list has served as a Wordle solution, which is generous for such a narrow pattern.

The RE- and SEP- openings take over

R is the busiest opening letter with 10 matches, and most of them wear the same RE- spelling: REPLY, REPAY, REPEL, REPOT, REPOS, REPRO, REPIN, REPEG and REPPS. REPLA is the one R-word that breaks the shared pattern of letters after the fixed EP.

The next clusters run S with 7 matches, including SEPIA, SEPOY, SEPAL, SEPTA and SEPTS, then T with 5 and L with 4. Naming the opening letter is the quickest way to shrink 38 matches to a handful.

The endings spread out more widely than the openings do: 7 matches close on S, 6 on A and 5 on Y, so the tail rarely settles the answer by itself. Combine a first-letter clue with an ending clue and the list collapses fast.

Facts worth knowing before you guess

• 38 matches, 9 of them Wordle answers and 37 accepted as guesses.
• DEPTH scores 11 points, the best value in the familiar half of the list.
• PEPPY tops all scores at 14, powered by two P tiles.
• KEPIS reaches 11 and GEPIK 12; GEPIK is the only match Collins leaves out.
• The 6 matches that end in A include SEPIA, LEPTA and PEPLA, and 5 end in Y.
• The average Scrabble score across the group is 8.4.

Watch the single outlier