5-letter words ending in G

Exactly one in three of the 141 words finishes in -ING, and the -ANG, -ONG and -UNG families add 41 more. Together those four tails hold 88 words. That leaves only a small remainder of oddballs to memorise, and most of those are rare spellings that you will seldom need in a real game.

Words ending in G, in numbers

• Dictionaries: 135 in Collins, 102 in NWL2023, 88 in ENABLE.
• 41 Wordle answers; one word is missing from the allowed guesses.
• 33 words are everyday vocabulary, ranked in the top 25,000.
• Average Scrabble score: 8.4; SQUEG leads at 15.
• S opens 28 words, far ahead of A with 11 and B or D with 10 each.

Which -NG endings make up the list?

-ING is the giant at 47 words, followed by -ANG at 22, -ONG at 11 and -UNG at 8. That is 88 of 141, a little over three in five. Learn the four vowel versions and you have most of the group.

-ING itself splits in two. DOING, USING, LYING, DYING, TYING and OWING are gerunds built on short verbs. THING, BRING, SWING, STING and CLING are root words that happen to share the tail.

Which Wordle answers end in G?

Forty-one have been answers, and 23 of them end in -ING. The ten most frequent are BEING, GOING, THING, DOING, USING, YOUNG, WRONG, ALONG, AMONG and BRING. After that come SWING, AGING, STING and SLANG.

Those four names show how the answer list leans on gerunds and plain -NG nouns alike.

A G in fifth place almost always means an N sits before it. Of the 141 words, 88 end in -NG, so test N in fourth place before you spend a turn on anything else. If the N is yellow or green, the vowel in third place is the only open question, and A, I, O and U cover nearly every case.

Which G words score the most?

SQUEG leads at 15, then AXING and REJIG at 13 and VYING at 12. AXING and VYING are ordinary gerunds built on heavy X and V tiles, so they are the safest high scores for casual play.

Collins accepts 135 of the 141, NWL2023 accepts 102 and ENABLE accepts 88, so words such as SQUEG are risky. Check your game's word list first.

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