7-letter words with P as the 2nd letter and H as the 5th letter

The pattern fixes the middle letters as _P__H__, leaving the first, third, fourth, sixth, and seventh slots open. All 14 matches appear in Collins, while 10 also appear in ENABLE and NWL2023. None meets the common-word cutoff, so this is a narrow tournament-word search rather than an everyday vocabulary set.

How many 7-letter words have P second and H fifth?

• Fourteen entries match the two fixed letter slots.
• Every entry is accepted in Collins; ten also occur in ENABLE and NWL2023.
• APHTHAE and APISHLY top the scoring list at 15 points apiece.
• Six entries start with S; A and E start four each.
• Five matches end in S, the most frequent final letter.

Which matches score the most?

APHTHAE and APISHLY each score 15, the highest value among these matches. APACHES, EPOCHAL, SPATHIC, EPITHEM, APOTHEM, and EPOCHAS each score 14, forming the next scoring tier. EPITHEM and APOTHEM share the same final four letters, an easy pair to overlook when checking a rack.

Don't confuse a high tile total with easy placement: APACHES repeats A and ends in -ES, unlike APHTHAE. Six matches begin with S, but only five end in S; an opening S and a closing S are not interchangeable when your board lane is fixed.

How to use the fixed letters

Treat the pattern as a filter, not a guess: lock P into slot two and H into slot five, then compare the remaining rack letters against entries such as EPITHET, EPOCHAL, or SPATHIC. No entry meets the common-word cutoff, so don't force a candidate merely because its outline fits. Check the game's dictionary before committing, especially outside Collins, since only ten of these fourteen also appear in ENABLE and NWL2023.

For 7-letter words with P as the 2nd letter and H as the 5th letter, use the first letter to narrow the search. S leads with six matches; A and E each lead to four. If the final letter is known to be S, five options remain; the other endings are scattered, with L and M appearing twice apiece.