6-letter words with H as the 2nd letter and W as the 4th letter

The fixed pattern looks like _H_W__, leaving the first, third, fifth, and sixth letters open. Familiar matches include SHOWED, SHOWER, CHEWED, and THAWED, but most entries are less common. The contrast matters in a word game: the full set appears in Collins, while only 15 entries appear in each of ENABLE and NWL2023.

The pattern at a glance

• The pattern has 29 six-letter entries across tournament dictionaries.
• Collins contains all 29; ENABLE and NWL2023 each contain 15.
• Only three entries rank among the 25,000 most common English words.
• C starts 12 words, ahead of S with 9 and T with 6.
• D ends 9 matches, while S ends 7.

Which matches are easiest to recognize?

SHOWED, SHOWER, CHEWED, and THAWED are the clearest everyday choices. Those recognizable examples sit beside rarer entries such as CHAWKS, CHOWKS, and THEWES, so a familiar-looking pattern does not mean every answer will be familiar.

Only three words qualify as common by the frequency measure used here. That makes everyday vocabulary a poor way to search the entire pattern: check less obvious C-, S-, and T-starting forms too. C alone accounts for 12 matches, while B and W each start just one.

What scores well, and where does the list narrow?

CHAWKS and CHOWKS lead the Scrabble scores at 18 points each; CHOWRY follows at 17. Their unusual letter combinations carry more scoring weight than familiar SHOWED, so consider the board position before choosing the word with the highest base score.

The average score across the matches is 13.8. Endings also cluster: D is the most frequent final letter, with 9 words, and S follows with 7. A last-letter clue can therefore cut the search quickly, while a less common ending such as I or N leaves only one match.

A dictionary limitation to keep in mind