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

The pattern is _M__S: M stays in the second spot and S closes every word. All 44 matches appear in at least one tournament dictionary, but none ranks among the top 25,000 English words by frequency. Wordle has 44 allowed guesses matching the pattern, yet only 2 are answers, so a clue match is much broader than the solution pool.

At a glance: the _M__S pattern

• The pattern yields 44 tournament-dictionary words, from AMISS to UMPHS.
• A begins 14 matches, E begins 10, and S begins 8.
• Every match ends in S; the final-letter clue does not narrow this set further.
• EMMYS, YMPES, and UMPHS each score 12 points.

Which letters begin these M-second, S-fifth words?

A leads the opening-letter count with 14 words, followed by E with 10 and S with 8. O starts 5; I and U start 3 apiece, while Y starts just 1. That makes A- and E-initial guesses the strongest starting clusters for this particular pattern.

The narrow count stands out beside other second-letter choices: 744 five-letter words have A second and S fifth, and 707 have O second and S fifth, compared with 44 for M. If your second-letter clue is uncertain, checking A or O opens a much larger matching set.

Do these matches work for Wordle or Scrabble?

The pattern includes 44 allowed Wordle guesses but only 2 answers. That gap matters: a word can be accepted as a guess without belonging to the answer list. None of the matches counts as common by the frequency measure here, so familiar options such as AMISS and OMENS are easier to recognize than many entries.

For 5-letter words with M as the 2nd letter and S as the 5th letter, EMMYS, YMPES, and UMPHS top the Scrabble scores at 12 points; AMOKS and EMYDS score 11. Dictionary coverage also varies: Collins includes 41, NWL2023 includes 31, and ENABLE includes 27. Check your game's word list before relying on a less familiar entry.