6-letter words with U as the 2nd letter and L as the 5th letter

Lock in the pattern _u__l_ before testing the open positions. Familiar answers such as HUMBLE, BUNDLE and TURTLE fit, but the group also includes less familiar game entries. Thirty-one matches are common by word-frequency ranking, while 136 have definitions.

At a glance: the U-and-L pattern

• There are 185 six-letter matches for U in position two and L in position five.
• The average tile score is 11.2 points.
• Thirty-one matches rank among common English words.
• The Collins list contains 184 matches; NWL2023 contains 148.
• R is the most frequent first letter, with 21 matches.

Which endings fit this six-letter pattern?

E is the leading final letter: 89 matches end in E. Y comes next with 45, followed by S with 27. That makes the last letter a strong way to cut down candidates once U and L are fixed.

Several recognizable E-ending words share the _u__le shape: MUSCLE, PURPLE, HUMBLE, SUBTLE, PUZZLE and BUNDLE. TURTLE also fits. If your clue already points to an E, those examples give you a useful starting cluster.

The less common endings still matter when a familiar guess fails. SUPPLY ends in Y, PUPILS ends in S, and the full pattern also includes words ending in I, A, O or T.

How can you narrow the U-second, L-fifth clue?

R leads the first-letter counts with 21 matches; P has 19 and B has 18. Try familiar candidates such as RUMBLE, PURPLE or BUBBLE against your known letters before reaching for obscure entries.

For a rack or score hunt, F U Z Z L E scores 27 points and WUZZLE scores 27; PUZZLE and MUZZLE score 26 each. These are raw tile scores, so board bonuses can change the final total.

The 185 matches are not shared evenly across game dictionaries: ENABLE has 142, while Collins has 184 and NWL2023 has 148. Some candidates will not transfer between lists, so check your game's word list before playing one.