6-letter words

Six letters is the length where a seven-tile rack leaves exactly one tile behind, and where suffixes do most of the work. Only 3,169 of the 22,710 words are common English, such as PEOPLE, SHOULD and REALLY, though 17,863 have a definition. The rest are mostly board vocabulary.

Six-letter words at a glance

• Collins accepts 22,158 six-letter words, NWL2023 accepts 16,706 and ENABLE accepts 15,232.
• S starts 2,737 words, far ahead of C (1,793) and B (1,609). X starts only 19.
• S ends 6,527 words and E ends 2,671, with D (2,526) and R (2,039) next.
• A vowel is the second letter in 14,920 words, about two in three.
• The average word scores 10.5 points, and MUZJIK reaches 28 with no blank.

How many 6-letter words end in S?

A total of 6,527, which is nearly three words in ten. In 5,721 of them the first five letters are a valid five-letter word, so most S-enders are a five-letter word plus an S.

Roughly a quarter of the S-enders, 1,694 words, end in ES, as in HOUSES.

The S also works as a bookend. Some 910 words both start and end with S, which makes a rack holding two S tiles unusually productive.

Y is the other busy ending at 1,678 words, from FAMILY and PRETTY to BEAUTY.

Suffixes and prefixes that build 6-letter words

• ED closes 2,103 words, such as PLAYED, WALKED and SMILED.
• ER closes 1,668, including PLAYER, BANKER and LETTER.
• ING closes 532, among them DURING and STRING, while LY closes 390, as in REALLY.
• RE opens 539 words, such as REPEAT and RETURN. UN opens 320, including UNABLE and UNLESS.
• Add them up: ED, ER, ING and LY alone close 4,693 of the 22,710 words.

Which letters start the most 6-letter words?

After S come C (1,793), B (1,609), P (1,582), T (1,360), R (1,264), M (1,218) and A (1,213). Consonants dominate the openings.

Vowels other than A start far fewer words: E opens 684, O 498 and I 382. The rare letters are small groups: Z opens 155, Q 130 and X just 19.

Two-letter openings give a finer view. RE leads with 539 words, followed by CO (463), CA (368), ST (361) and MA (360). Starting a search from a prefix like RE narrows 22,710 candidates fast.

Which six letters make the most anagrams?

AELRST. Those six tiles spell 12 different words: ALERTS, ALTERS, ARTELS, ESTRAL, LASTER, RATELS, SALTER, SLATER, STALER, STELAR, TALERS and TARSEL.

No other six-letter set matches that total; the runner-up, AELPST, makes 11. Eleven of the 12 are valid in NWL2023, and TARSEL is Collins only.

There is a reason these letters pair so well. A standard set holds 12 E tiles, 9 A tiles, 6 R tiles, 6 T tiles, 4 L tiles and 4 S tiles, so you will draw this combination far more often than a family built on rare letters.

If your rack holds A, E, L, R, S and T, play every permutation in your head before settling for a lower score.

What are the highest-scoring 6-letter words?

MUZJIK scores 28 from a Z, a J and a K, all single tiles, so no blank is needed. QUEAZY follows at 27, then QUARTZ at 24 and JOCKEY at 22.

Bigger totals exist on paper only. PIZAZZ lists at 35, but it holds three Zs, and with one real Z and two blanks it plays for 15.

More realistic are WIZARD, HAZARD and ZIPPER, which score 19 each from one Z.

Without a Z or Q, KICKED, BRONZE and RHYTHM reach 17 each. JOCKEY stands out because it is also a common word, so opponents rarely challenge it.

Double letters and words with no vowels

Some 4,172 six-letter words contain a doubled letter, nearly one in five. COFFEE, BOTTLE, HAPPEN and FOLLOW all do. Only 40 open with a double, such as EERILY.

Just three words avoid A, E, I, O, U and Y alike: CRWTHS, TSKTSK and GRRRLS. The first two pass in every dictionary and GRRRLS is NWL2023 only.

Allow Y and the family grows. RHYTHM and NYMPHS both live on Y alone, and 24 six-letter words have no A, E, I, O or U.

Finishing on a vowel is less common than you might guess: 4,123 words, about 18 percent, end in A, E, I, O or U. Consonant endings, led by S, make up the other four in five, so a rack heavy with consonants still has places to finish.

Are most 6-letter words common English?

No. Only 3,169 of the 22,710 are common, about one in seven. The everyday ones include BEFORE, AROUND, ALWAYS, BETTER, LITTLE, THINGS and DURING.

Collins accepts 6,004 words that NWL2023 rejects, NWL2023 accepts 552 that Collins does not, and ENABLE leaves out 7,478, about one in three. Check your game's list before you lay an unfamiliar word. Definitions are far more widespread than frequency, with 17,863 words, about four in five, carrying one.

Using 6-letter words in play

1. Look first for a five-letter word on the board that takes an S. That hook produces most of the S-enders.
2. Learn the AELRST family so those six tiles are never wasted.
3. Hold back an S when you can. With 6,527 S-enders on offer, it is worth more attached to a five-letter word than spent early.
4. Save a Z, J or Q tile for a word like JOCKEY or QUARTZ, where one premium tile carries the score.
5. Enter your rack in the Finder to list every 6-letter word it spells, or compare with 7-letter words.