6-letter words with P as the 2nd letter and L as the 4th letter

The pattern is P?L???, but the words vary sharply in familiarity and game-list coverage. SPILLS and SPELLS are recognizable examples; SPELTZ is the top scorer. Most matches begin with S, and the ending S is also common, so checking both ends can narrow a puzzle search quickly.

The pattern at a glance

• Exactly 28 tournament-dictionary words match P?L???.
• Sixteen begin with S, while five begin with A.
• Four entries count as common by our word-frequency measure.
• Collins lists all 28; NWL2023 lists 16, and ENABLE lists 14.

6-letter words with P as the 2nd letter and L as the 4th letter

Exactly 28 words fit the six-letter pattern P?L???. APPLES, APPLET, APOLLO, SPELLS, and SPILLS give you familiar starting points; the remaining entries include less everyday forms such as EPILOG and UPFLOW.

S is the leading first letter, with 16 words, compared with five beginning in A. The final letter is often S too: 14 words end that way. That makes APPLES, SPELLS, and SPILLS especially easy to recognize among the matches.

Only four entries meet our common-word frequency threshold. The rest can be useful for dictionary games, but don't assume every answer will sound familiar or appear in every game's word list.

Which matching word scores the most?

SPELTZ leads the scoring examples at 17 points, ahead of UPFLOW at 14. APPLEY scores 13, while APPLES and APPLET each score 10. These are tile-point totals, so a board premium can change the result of a play.

The same P-and-L positions are less common in six-letter words than in some neighboring patterns: changing P to A in the second position gives 250 matches, and changing L to I in the fourth gives 62. Nearby lengths are smaller, with 16 five-letter and 46 seven-letter matches.

For a real game, check your game's word list before relying on unusual entries such as SPELTZ. The dictionary counts differ: Collins has 28 matches, while NWL2023 and ENABLE include fewer.