5-letter words with H as the 2nd letter and O as the 3rd letter

The shape is _HO_, which turns out to be the home of most English digraphs: SH- covers 33 matches, CH- 28, WH- 11 and TH- 10. That density makes the list unusually friendly, with 30 common words and 29 Wordle answers. Scores climb when a K or an X follows the O.

Key numbers for the _HO_ list

• One hundred nine matches, all with H second and O third.
• SH- opens 33 and CH- 28, so those two cover over half.
• KHOJA and ZHOMO share the top score on 19.
• Twenty-nine matches are Wordle answers.
• Thirty matches are common English and 86 have a definition.

Every English digraph hides in this shape

The H in slot two forces a digraph, and the O in slot three decides which one. SH- supplies SHORT, SHOES, SHOCK and SHOOT; CH- supplies CHOSE, CHOIR, CHOKE and CHORD; WH- supplies WHOLE, WHOSE, WHOOP and WHORL. The rarer pairs fill out the rest, with GH- in GHOST and GHOUL, PH- in PHOTO and PHONE, and a single ZH- in ZHOMO.

That is why the list feels familiar despite its length. Most English words with an sh or f sound spelled as two letters land on this pattern, so a solver who holds O third and H second is staring at one of the deepest pools in the game.

A quarter of the list is on the Wordle answer sheet

Twenty-nine of the 109 matches are Wordle answers, and the familiar ones read like core vocabulary: THOSE, WHOLE, SHORT, PHONE, WHOSE, PHOTO, SHOWN, SHOOT, SHOES, CHOSE, SHOCK, GHOST, SHORE, SHOUT and CHOIR. Thirty matches qualify as common English, which makes this the friendliest pattern in the H-second group. One match, PHOHS, sits outside the legal guess list; everything else is playable.

Where Collins outruns the other lists