5-letter words — browse and filter by letter and position
A plain word-list browser: fix the letters you already know by position, list letters the word has to contain, and list letters it can't have — see every matching word instantly, from a list of about 8,500.
How to search
- Known positions. Type a letter into any of the five boxes to fix that position; leave a box blank for “could be anything.” Searching
_RA_E(R in position 2, A in position 3, E in position 5) finds every word of that shape. - Must contain. List letters the word has to include somewhere, in any position — useful once you know a letter is in the word but not where.
- Must not contain. List letters the word can’t have at all, such as letters you've already ruled out.
All three filters combine, and the list updates as you type. For colour-coded green/yellow/grey clues from an actual guess, the main solver handles the count logic (including duplicate letters) that this simpler page doesn’t attempt.
Some patterns in the list
Numbers below are exact counts over this site's own list of five-letter words, not estimates.
| Letter | Appears in this many of the 8,506 words |
|---|---|
| A | 3,879 |
| E | 3,642 |
| R | 2,862 |
| O | 2,492 |
| I | 2,455 |
| S | 2,210 |
| T | 2,193 |
| L | 2,190 |
That's why A, E, R, S and T dominate advice about opening guesses: between them they touch the large majority of five-letter words in a general dictionary. S is also, by a wide margin, the most common starting letter — 1,132 of the 8,506 words in this list start with it, more than double the runner-up.
5,497 of the 8,506 words — about 65% — use five entirely different letters with no repeats. The other 35% repeat at least one letter, which is exactly the case the main solver's duplicate-letter handling exists for.