7-letter words with U as the 1st letter and T as the 2nd letter

UT is one of the few pairs where the whole list can be played without checking a dictionary. Four words begin UTO, three begin UTI and three begin UTT, and the rest are singles like UTENSIL and UTMOSTS. Five of the 14 are common English.

All 14 words at a glance

• UTO: UTOPIAN, UTOPISM, UTOPIAS and UTOPIST.
• UTI: UTILITY, UTILIZE and UTILISE.
• UTT: UTTERLY, UTTERED and UTTERER.
• The singles: UTMOSTS, UTERINE, UTENSIL and UTRICLE.
• The average score is 9.1, and UTILIZE leads at 16.

Why does UTILIZE outscore every other UT word?

UTILIZE is worth 16 because the Z is worth 10. UTOPISM follows at 11, then UTILITY and UTTERLY at 10, and UTOPIAN and UTOPIAS at 9.

UTILISE, the British spelling, loses the Z and scores only 7. Both spellings are accepted by all three dictionaries, so the choice is entirely about points: the Z version is worth 9 more.

The UTOPIA family shows how a single final letter moves the score. UTOPISM ends in an M worth 3 points, which lifts it two above UTOPIAN, UTOPIAS and UTOPIST, each of which scores 9. Tiny gaps like that decide close games, and all four are safe in any dictionary.

Which UT words are everyday English?

UTILITY, UTTERLY, UTILIZE, UTTERED and UTOPIAN rank in the top 25,000 English words. That is five of 14, so more than a third of the page is words you would meet in ordinary reading.

UTMOSTS, UTRICLE and UTOPIST are the least familiar, though all three are valid everywhere. UTTERLY, UTTERED and UTTERER form a tidy family built on the same stem: an adverb, a past form and an agent noun.

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