5-letter words with O as the 2nd letter and I as the 4th letter

The shape is __O_I_, so the O and I sit two squares apart and the vowel pair drives the list. Twenty-three words close on -IC, from LOGIC and COMIC to TOXIC and SONIC, while thirty-one end in E, mostly -IE forms such as MOVIE, HOMIE and LOUIE. C opens 14 words, L opens 12, T, R and M open ten each, and 17 of the 126 are Wordle answers.

The O-second, I-fourth group in numbers

• 126 words match the pattern.
• 23 end in -IC and 31 end in E.
• C opens 14 words, L 12, and T, R and M ten each.
• 17 are Wordle answers and 23 are common.
• ZOWIE leads at 17, with COMIX, KOJIS and COZIE on 16.
• 33 words appear only in Collins.

The -IC shelf of adjectives and nouns

The -IC suffix is the biggest single family at 23 words, and almost every one is an adjective: LOGIC, COMIC, TOXIC, SONIC, IONIC, CONIC, TOPIC and COLIC all follow the same close. That makes a final C a strong filter here.

Below that, the endings thin out fast. Twenty-one words end in S, 15 in N and 11 in A, while just two end in X and two in K. The -IC group alone is larger than any two of those endings combined.

Where the -IE and -E words come from

Thirty-one words end in E, and most are informal or diminutive -IE spellings: MOVIE, HOMIE, LOUIE, COZIE, DOXIE and the high-scoring ZOWIE. The -IA plurals are a smaller shelf of their own, holding DOLIA, TOMIA and CONIA.

Thirty-three of the 126 words appear only in Collins, so DORIS, BOWIE, HOKIS and MOKIS vanish from a North American rack. Two others fall outside the accepted Wordle guess list.

Vowel-heavy, so play the rare letters