6-letter words with L as the 3rd letter and K as the 4th letter

The LK cluster sits in the middle of the word and drags a lot of ordinary English along with it. Walking, talking, milking and sulking all land here. That gives the list a sturdier everyday core than most letter-pair pages, even though only a handful of entries rank as common.

The LK pattern in numbers

• 42 words fit, and Collins accepts every one.
• 14 end in D, exactly one third of the list: WALKED, TALKED, MILKED, BALKED and others.
• KOLKOZ scores 23, the best of the group; FOLKSY and VALKYR follow at 16.
• B, P, S and W each start six words, with M next on five.

Why do so many of these words end in -ED?

Because LK is the end of a verb stem. Add -ED and you get BILKED, BULKED, HULKED and SULKED, and add -ER and you get WALKER, TALKER and MILKER. Nine words end in R, which is the second biggest finish after D.

That makes the first two guesses easy. If a clue says action, past tense, try D; if it names a person or a thing that does the action, try R.

Which entries are not simple verbs?

A few stand apart. SILKEN is an adjective, WELKIN an old word for the sky, TALKIE and SELKIE end in -IE, and POLKAS is a plural dance noun. KOLKOZ is the oddity, a Collins spelling of the Russian collective farm.

Dictionaries differ. ENABLE holds 30 of the 42, NWL2023 holds 34, and Collins holds all 42, so a Collins-only entry such as KOLKOZ will bounce in a North American game. Check your game's word list before you gamble on it.

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