5-letter words with Y as the 1st letter and D as the 5th letter

Y first and D last is a small, strange family: sixteen words, eight of them past-tense forms ending in -ED. Six begin with Y followed by a consonant, relics of an Old English prefix, and five of those survive on Collins alone. YIELD is the only answer and the only everyday word.

Y-to-D in one view

• Sixteen words put Y first and D last.
• Eight end in -ED, easily the largest ending group in the set.
• Six open with Y plus a consonant: YCLAD, YCLED, YCOND, YDRAD, YDRED and YRIVD.
• YIELD is the only Wordle answer and the only common word here.
• Collins takes all 16; NWL2023 stops at 8 and ENABLE at 6.

Six archaic y- forms and what they cost

The six words that open with Y plus a consonant are the interesting ones. YCLAD, YCLED, YCOND, YDRAD, YDRED and YRIVD all descend from Old English past participles that kept the y- prefix, and five of the six survive on Collins alone. YCLAD is the exception, because NWL2023 takes it too.

That split makes the group awkward in play. ENABLE stops at 6 and NWL2023 at 8, so half the list is unavailable on a North American board even though Collins considers all sixteen words legitimate.

Which Y-to-D words should you play?

YEXED is the top score at 16, lifted by its X, and YOKED, YIKED and YUKED follow at 13 each. YAWED and YOWED score 12, and YRIVD also reaches 12. Across the whole group the average is 11.3, so the scores stay close together.

For a daily puzzle, only YIELD matters: it is the sole Wordle answer and the sole common word. Everything else is an archaic spelling or a rare past tense, and the pattern holds no six- or seven-letter entries at all, which makes it a five-letter curiosity rather than part of a wider family.