6-letter words with P as the 3rd letter and E as the 6th letter

That pattern fixes the word’s middle and final positions, but leaves the first, second, fourth, and fifth letters open. The set includes familiar options such as expose, oppose, and alpine, alongside less common entries. Only 13 matches fall into the common-word group, so expect plenty of unfamiliar choices when solving from memory.

The pattern at a glance

• There are 85 six-letter matches across the tournament dictionaries.
• Collins includes all 85; ENABLE includes 66 and NWL2023 includes 67.
• Only 13 matches are classed as common by word frequency.
• Hyphae leads the score list at 17 points; expose and expire score 15 each.
• The most frequent first letter is R, with 10 matches.

How many 6-letter words have P third and E sixth?

There are 85 matches. The last letter is fixed as E in every entry, while the first letter varies: R leads with 10 words, followed by D and I with eight each. Empire, expose, and oppose show how different the opening letters can be.

Several everyday-looking choices share the pattern: impose, aspire, ripple, and topple. Other examples include umpire, dipole, and repute. The range makes the pattern easier to recognize by chunks: empire and impose share an ending, while oppose and expose share another.

Definitions are available for 63 entries, but frequency is a different measure: just 13 count as common. That gap matters in a word game. A match can be valid in a tournament dictionary without being a word you would reach for in ordinary conversation.

For scoring, hyphae stands apart at 17 points. Expose and expire follow at 15, while koppie, gyppie, mopoke, and hypate each score 14. The high scorer uses a less familiar spelling, so a strong tile score does not make it an obvious pattern guess.

Which clues narrow the 85 matches?

• For 6-letter words with P as the 3rd letter and E as the 6th letter, test familiar starts such as EM, EX, OP, and IM.
• If the first letter is R, the pattern has 10 matches; D and I each have eight.
• Changing the final letter to D leaves 78 matches, while ending in G leaves 35.
• Keep the final E fixed before testing the middle: the third-position P is the key constraint.
• For a longer pattern with the same fixed letters, the 7-letter set has 267 matches.