7-letter words with U as the 2nd letter and C as the 6th letter

With C parked in sixth place, the final letter is almost a formality. K closes nearly half the list, E closes most of the rest, and S picks up the plurals. Once you know that, the work is in the first five letters.

Where the 73 words come from

• Collins accepts all 73, NWL2023 accepts 56 and ENABLE accepts 53.
• Eight words are common: JUSTICE, SUBJECT, SURFACE, SUSPECT, FURNACE, SUFFICE, BULLOCK and OUTBACK.
• The average score is 13.9, helped by K, J and Q words.
• Last letters: K for 34 words, E for 16, S for 10 and T for 5.
• S opens 13 words, and O and B open 7 each.

Which -CK endings should you try first?

The -OCK group is the biggest at 19 words, which takes in BULLOCK, BURDOCK, HUMMOCK, TUSSOCK and the Collins-only MUMMOCK. -ACK has 7 more, namely OUTBACK, BUYBACK, CUTBACK and MUDPACK, and -ICK has 5.

That makes 31 words from three endings alone, and 31 of 73 is a solid head start. The fifth letter is O in 20 of the 73 and A in 19, so the vowel before the C is easy to guess.

What do the words ending in E and S look like?

E ends 16 words, and 7 of them finish in -ACE, among them SURFACE, FURNACE and OUTPACE. Others stop at -NCE, like DURANCE, or -ICE, like JUSTICE and SUFFICE.

The 10 S-endings include PUBLICS, RUBRICS and RUSTICS, which are plurals of words ending in C. They need no hook, so a spare S is easy to place.

Which entries are risky in NWL2023?

Seventeen of the 73 fail in NWL2023. QUETSCH, BUMMOCK and MUMMOCK are in that group, so skip them in a North American game, where a failed play can cost you points.

JUMBUCK, which scores 24, passes everywhere. HUMMOCK and BUYBACK each score 20 and pass as well, while SUBJECT and MUDPACK reach 18.