6-letter words with E as the 4th letter and O as the 5th letter

Every match plants E fourth and O fifth, so the vowel pair sits late and the word nearly always ends in -OS or -ON. Cameos, rodeos, romeos, videos, vireos and mimeos form the plural-looking -eos group; pigeon, wigeon, hereon and pereon close with -eon. P opens 5 of the 18 matches, more than any other first letter.

The E-O pattern at a glance

• All 18 matches put E fourth and O fifth, from videos and meteor to hereof.
• S closes 11 matches, all of them -EOS plurals from cameos to roneos.
• N closes 4 more: pigeon, wigeon, hereon and pereon.
• P opens 5 matches, R opens 3, and C, H, M and V open 2 each.
• Only videos, pigeon and meteor rank among the most frequent English words.

Which words carry the -EOS ending?

Eleven matches end in -EOS, and every one is a loanword plural: cameos, rodeos, romeos, videos, vireos, mimeos, paseos, pareos, buteos, paleos and roneos.

The four -EON words behave differently. Pigeon and wigeon are everyday birds, hereon is the formal one, and pereon names a crustacean body segment.

Hereof breaks the run entirely, ending in -OF, and it is also the top scorer at 12 points.

Why the scores stay so low

E and O are one-point tiles, and S, N, R, D, L and C stay at one or two, so no match here carries a J, Q, X or Z.

That keeps the average at 8.7. Hereof climbs to 12 on its H and F, while videos, cameos, wigeon and mimeos each score 10.

Rare-letter players will find little help here. The best tiles on the list are the V of videos and vireos, the W of wigeon, and the H and F of hereof and hereon.