7-letter words with D as the 1st letter and T as the 4th letter

The fixed pattern is D _ _ T _ _ _, so the two tiles after D and the three after T are open. Doctors, dentist, and dictate show familiar routes through the pattern; diptych and deutzia are less everyday options. Only 12 entries count as common, making recognition a useful filter when the rack or puzzle gives you few letters.

The D-and-T pattern at a glance

• There are 139 tournament-dictionary words with D first and T fourth.
• Doctors, destroy, destiny, and distant are recognizable examples in the group.
• Only 12 entries meet the common-word cutoff, so many matches are specialist or uncommon.
• Words ending in S lead the endings, with 38 matches; G is next, with 20.

How many match in each word list?

Collins includes 137 matches, while NWL2023 includes 106 and ENABLE includes 100. Those counts overlap: the combined set has 139 distinct words, not the sum of the three dictionary totals. Collins misses only two of them.

A practical starting point is to try familiar forms such as doctors, dentist, and dietary before testing specialist entries. The 12 common words are a small share of the total, so check your game's word list once before relying on an obscure match.

Which D-starting match scores the most?

Diptych is the top scorer at 18 points, ahead of deutzia at 17. Both make strong use of high-value letters, but diptych is the standout when you can place its unusual spelling. Six words then tie at 15, among them dextran, dextral and dexters.

The ending pattern gives another useful clue: 38 words finish in S, compared with 20 ending in G. That makes plural-looking forms such as doctors and debtors worth checking early, while the overall average score is 9.9. Behind S and G, the next endings are E with 14 words and N with 12, and D closes 11 more.