7-letter words with U as the 3rd letter and N as the 7th letter

N closes every word here, so the sixth letter does the sorting: O ends 19 words, E ends 19, A ends 14 and I ends 13. That gives four tidy families, -ON, -EN, -AN and -IN, and a wide gap between Collins at 66 and ENABLE at 36.

Counts for the U-N final list

• All 66 are in Collins, 39 are in NWL2023 and 36 are in ENABLE.
• Five are common: CAUTION, REUNION, DRUNKEN, BOURBON and NEUTRON.
• S opens 9 words, C opens 8, B opens 6, and D and F open 5 each.
• Leaders on points are FLUXION 17, EXURBAN 16, AQUILON 16 and AZUREAN 16.
• A typical word scores 10.6.

Which sixth letters group 7-letter words ending in N with U 3rd?

O gives -ION, -TON and -RON words: CAUTION, REUNION, ELUSION, FLUXION, NEUTRON, BOURBON and GLUTTON. -ION is the largest tail at 7 words.

E gives -HEN and -DEN words like TOUGHEN, ROUGHEN, DRUNKEN and BOUNDEN. A gives SAURIAN, GRUNION and AZUREAN, and I gives DAUPHIN, BLUEFIN, MAUDLIN and SCULPIN.

Five words end in -HEN, namely TOUGHEN, ROUGHEN, YOUTHEN, LEUGHEN and LEUCHEN. The first three are the ones to remember, because LEUGHEN and LEUCHEN are valid only in Collins.

Why is the ENABLE count so much lower?

Collins keeps 30 more words than ENABLE in this frame, nearly half of its list. The extras are mostly rarities: AQUILON, AZUREAN, FAUCHON and DRUCKEN.

FLUXION and EXURBAN are the safer high scorers, since both are in ENABLE, NWL2023 and Collins. Treat AQUILON and AZUREAN as Collins-only unless your game says otherwise.

In practice, that means ENABLE players should lean on the 36 shared words, and Collins players can add the extra 30.

Practical shortcut