5-letter words with U as the 2nd letter and L as the 3rd letter

The endings lean plural: 42 words close in S and 16 in Y, so RULES, PULLS, BULBS and MULES dominate the tail. Twenty-five entries repeat an L somewhere, and the -ULLY run covers BULLY, CULLY, DULLY, FULLY, GULLY and SULLY. HULKY is the top scorer at 15.

How the U-second, L-third list lines up

• 109 words fit the U-L frame, every one of them five letters long.
• 42 end in S, 16 in Y and 10 in A.
• PUL- opens 16 words, GUL- 12, MUL- 11, CUL- 10 and BUL- 9.
• Fifteen are Wordle answers, among them BULGE, BULLY, PULSE, RULER, SULKY and TULIP.
• HULKY leads at 15, with BULKY, ZULUS, JULEP and CULEX on 14.
• Twenty-five words repeat an L, and seven close in -ULLY.

The plural tail and the -ULLY run

S closes 42 of the 109 words, and the -ULLY group is the tidiest sub-pattern of all: BULLY, CULLY, DULLY, FULLY, GULLY, SULLY and HULLY each repeat the L and finish in Y. LULLS, LULUS, NULLA and NULLS add a second L from the other side of the word.

Openings fall into three clusters, PUL- with 16 words, GUL- with 12 and MUL- with 11, ahead of CUL- on 10 and BUL- on 9. Sixteen of the set are common words, and RULES, RULER and RULED give a solver a family to lock in early.

Which rare letters lift the scores?

Only three words contain J, Q, X or Z, and all three score 14: ZULUS, JULEP and CULEX. HULKY tops the list at 15 without one, and BULKY, KULAK and GULCH reach 14, 13 and 11 on a K or an H.

Away from those letters the totals fall away quickly, and the floor is 5. Knowing a handful of high-value entries matters more here than learning the whole list.

The dictionary gap on -UL- spellings