Word game guides
Short guides to the questions word-game players actually ask. Every list and every number is pulled from our word list by a script when the site is built, so the page and the tools always agree.
- Best starting wordsEvery five-letter word tested as a first guess against the likely answers. RAISE, ARISE and IRATE come out on top.
- 5-letter game strategyOpen with common letters, use the second guess to rule out more, and watch out for repeated letters and word families.
- Repeated lettersWhy one E can be yellow and the other gray, and what that tells you about the answer.
- How anagrams workSort the letters and compare – plus the biggest anagram families and longest anagram pairs in our list.
- Words without vowelsAll 119 words with no A, E, I, O or U, and the 20 that do not even use Y.
- Q without UThe 29 words where Q is not followed by U, from QAT to SHEQALIM.
- Longest wordsThe 28-letter champion, the longest words in SCOWL size ≤ 50, and how word length is distributed.
- Letter frequencyEvery letter counted across our whole list and across common words – useful for word games and puzzles.
- Two-letter wordsThe complete list of 96 two-letter words, and which famous ones are missing from ENABLE.
- How rhymes workPerfect, near and eye rhymes explained with sounds, and why ORANGE really has no perfect rhyme.
- PalindromesAll 101 words that read the same forwards and backwards, from ABA to ROTATOR.