6-letter words with O as the 5th letter and Y as the 6th letter

The pattern is unusually tight: only 24 six-letter entries put O in slot five and Y at the end. EMPLOY, COWBOY, CONVOY, and DEPLOY are familiar anchors; many other matches are niche compounds or specialist terms. Just 4 entries count as common, so recognizing the familiar words is easier than recalling every option.

The O-Y pattern at a glance

• There are 24 matches across the tournament word lists.
• Only 4 count as common English words; EMPLOY, COWBOY, CONVOY, and DEPLOY stand out.
• T begins 4 entries, while B, C, and P begin 3 each.
• POPJOY leads the scoring list at 20 points, ahead of FLYBOY at 17.

6-letter words with O as the 5th letter and Y as the 6th letter

That 24-word total is small beside nearby letter patterns: 390 six-letter words place L in the fifth slot and end in Y. With O fixed, the scarce O-Y pairing leaves few fallback guesses.

EMPLOY and DEPLOY are everyday verb choices, while COWBOY and CONVOY are familiar nouns. Their shared ending does not make them interchangeable in a puzzle: test the O in slot five first, then use the opening letters to separate candidates. T leads 4 matches; B, C, and P lead 3 apiece.

Dictionary coverage overlaps rather than adding cleanly: ENABLE has 13 matches, Collins 22, and NWL2023 16, against 24 unique words overall. That is why the dictionary counts do not sum to the total.

Which O-Y words score highest?

POPJOY scores 20, FLYBOY 17, and COWBOY 16 in Scrabble. CONVOY and FANBOY each score 14, while EMPLOY scores 13, so the familiar options trade points for easier recall.

One limitation matters: only 4 entries are common, and the 24-word total combines words accepted by at least one of Collins, NWL2023, or ENABLE. A game using a single dictionary may exclude some entries; check its word list before relying on an obscure option such as POPJOY.

For a nearby clue, keeping O fifth but switching the last letter to W expands the set to 65. Changing the fifth letter to L while keeping Y gives 390. The comparison shows that the fifth-slot O is the tight bottleneck.