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

This is the biggest of the D-first patterns with a fixed interior letter. During, demand and dating are the familiar core, and 19 of the 99 count as common words. The endings tell the story: G closes 34 matches and S another 21, while Collins lists 95, NWL2023 76 and ENABLE 70.

The D-and-N pattern at a glance

• 99 matches, the largest D-first group here; Collins keeps 95.
• 34 close on G, 21 on S, 14 on E and 10 on T.
• 32 of the G endings are -ING verbs such as during, daring and dozing.
• 19 matches are common words, and 76 have a definition.
• Dezinc leads the scores on 18; eight matches reach 15 or more.

How many of the D-N words are -ING forms?

32 of the 34 words ending in G are -ING forms, so the pattern is a place to hunt participles. Daring, dating, dining, diving, drying, dosing, doping and during are the everyday ones, while deking, dewing, diking and duding are rarer.

The two exceptions are defang and dugong, the only G endings that are not gerunds. Add an S and the list grows again: 21 matches close on S, many of them plural forms like drains, demons and dozens.

Which D-N words score best?

Dezinc takes the top score of 18 on a single Z, and dozing, dazing and djinny share 17. Dozens and dizens reach 16, and doxing follows on 15. The rare tiles do all the work: eight matches clear 15 points, yet the average across the group is only 9.9.

Djinny, djinns and djinni are also the only entries that open DJ-, a pair worth remembering when you hold J and D together. Outside the top scorers the list is largely ordinary verbs, and ENABLE keeps 70 of the 99.

A note on the -ING endings