7-letter words with U as the 3rd letter and T as the 5th letter

Two endings swallow most of this pattern. -TED closes 44 words and -TER closes another 39, so 83 of the 133 are past tenses or agent nouns like HAUNTED and CLUSTER. Spot the verb stem and you are nearly done, because only a handful of words fall outside those two tails.

Quick facts about U-third, T-fifth words

• Out of 133 words, Collins accepts 132, NWL2023 103 and ENABLE 98.
• COUNTRY, COUNTER, MOUNTED and TRUSTED head a common-word group of 17.
• D closes 44 words, R closes 42 and E closes 13.
• SQUITCH is worth 21, with SQUATLY and SQUATTY on 19.
• The average word is worth 10.4 points.

Why do so many of them end in -TED or -TER?

A fifth-place T sits right before the ending, so the pattern is full of verb stems like COUNT, HAUNT and TRUST. Adding -ED gives 44 words, among them COUNTED, MOUNTED, HAUNTED, DOUBTED and TRUSTED. Adding -ER gives 39, including COUNTER, CLUSTER and SHUTTER.

The -TOR tail adds 3 more, which is why R finishes 42 of the words. Together -TED and -TER are 83 of 133, so more than six words in ten fall into one of the two.

What about the words that do not end in -TED or -TER?

The leftovers are led by the adverb tail -TLY with 5 words, such as BLUNTLY, and -TLE with 5, including SHUTTLE and SCUTTLE. COUNTRY and POULTRY are the everyday words with Y as the last letter.

The scoring words are a different group. SQUITCH reaches 21 and SQUATLY 19, while AQUATIC scores 18 and EQUATOR 16. AQUATIC and EQUATOR are the only common ones among them.

Check this before you play a rare one