5-letter words with W as the 1st letter and D as the 3rd letter

Nineteen matches make up this frame, and two stems, WAD- and WID-, account for 13 of them. Only WEDGE, WIDEN, WIDER, WIDOW and WIDTH appear among the 25,000 most common English words, and that same handful are the only Wordle answers. W is worth 4, which pushes the average up to 10.4.

W?D?? at a glance

• Nineteen matches, all with W first and D third.
• WAD- opens seven and WID- six, covering 13 words.
• Every match splits W and D with a vowel.
• Five are common words, and the same five are answers.
• WADDY, WEDGY, WIDDY and WUDDY tie on 13 points.

How WAD- and WID- dominate the list

WAD- supplies seven matches, WADDY, WADED, WADER, WADES, WADIS, WADDS and WADTS, and WID- supplies six: WIDDY, WIDEN, WIDER, WIDES, WIDOW and WIDTH. Those two stems cover 13 of the 19 words.

WED- contributes three, WEDEL, WEDGE and WEDGY, WUD- two, WUDDY and WUDUS, and WOD- one, WODGE. No match runs the W straight into the D; a vowel always splits them, so the shape never hardens into a W-D blend.

The five words that are both common and answers

WEDGE, WIDEN, WIDER, WIDOW and WIDTH are the only matches in the top 25,000 English words, and the same five are the sole Wordle answers. That complete overlap is unusual among pattern lists.

Everything else is dialect or archaic. WADDY, WADIS, WODGE, WUDDY and WUDUS rarely surface outside a word list, and WUDDY is the lone entry that only NWL2023 accepts. Collins games therefore lose one of the four 13-point words.

A four-way tie at the top