5-letter words with T as the 1st letter and O as the 3rd letter

TH claims another 10 words, and TOO plus TW split the remaining six. Nine matches are Wordle answers, led by those, tooth, trout, troll and troop. Twelve close on S and seven on E, and a typical word in the set scores 7.4 points.

Where the T-O words cluster

• Forty-one matches place T first and O third.
• TR carries 25 of them and TH another 10.
• Nine entries serve as Wordle answers and nine rank as common words.
• Trooz, trock, thoft and thowl are the four strongest scoring plays, at 14 and 11.
• Twelve matches end in S and seven in E.

Which T-O words are Wordle answers?

Nine matches appear on the answer list: thong, thorn, those, tooth, troll, troop, trope, trout and trove. Eight of them also belong to the common-word group, and trove is the single exception. Trove is also the rarest of the nine in everyday English.

The mirror case is tools, a common word that never serves as an answer. For a solver, that overlap is a gift, because guessing thorn or trout satisfies the pattern and still matches a word the game may want.

What lifts a T-O word above the 7.4 average?

Trooz leads on 14 points, carried by a 10-point Z, while trock, thoft and thowl share 11. Thorp follows on 10, against an average of 7.4. Trooz is the only match above 11 points, and its two O tiles add just one point apiece.

NWL2023 keeps 30 of the 41 matches and ENABLE keeps 29, while Collins holds all of them. Thoft and thowl are Collins-only spellings, so they will not appear everywhere. Twelve matches close in S and seven in E, giving you two obvious endings to test.

Check your game's word list once before you play a Collins-only spelling.