5-letter words with S as the 3rd letter and E as the 5th letter

This pattern fixes two tiles: S sits in the middle, and E closes the word. That leaves the first, second, and fourth letters to solve. Familiar options include ISSUE, WASTE, TASTE, PASTE, and AISLE, but the full set also contains less common entries; the counts include words found in at least one tournament dictionary.

5-letter words with S as the 3rd letter and E as the 5th letter

• There are 49 tournament-dictionary words matching the S-in-third, E-in-fifth pattern.
• All 49 end in E; the final position is fixed, not another letter to test.
• P leads the starting-letter counts with 5 words; C, G, and M each start 4.
• 10 entries fall within the top 25,000 English words by frequency.
• Collins includes 48 matches, compared with 28 in NWL2023 and 27 in ENABLE.

Which matching words appear in Wordle?

11 matching words appear in Wordle’s answer list, and all 11 are also in a tournament dictionary. The allowed-guess count is 49, so the pattern covers every matching entry in that count. With S and E already fixed, test the remaining three spaces rather than spending a guess on another ending.

Start with recognisable candidates such as ISSUE, WASTE, TASTE, PASTE, CASTE, and HASTE. These show how much the first two letters can change while the same S-E frame remains. The catch is that only 10 matches are common by the frequency measure, so a technically accepted guess is not necessarily a word you use every day.

Which S-third, E-final words score most?

JASPE leads the scores at 14 points, followed by JESSE at 12 and KASME at 11. WASTE, HASTE, FOSSE, FUSEE, FESSE, VISIE, and DISME each score 8. The striking part is the gap: familiar words such as WASTE sit well below the rare-letter leader.

For a board game, the accepted dictionary decides whether a high-scoring word is playable. Collins has 48 matches, while NWL2023 has 28; those totals show why a word accepted in one game may not work in another. Keep the pattern as a clue first, then confirm the individual entry in your game’s word list.