Which Letters Start and End the Most 5-Letter Words
First and last letters, counted across both of the lists behind our tools.
S starts more five-letter words than any other letter, about one in six of the common words we track. C and B come next. At the other end, E and Y finish a third of common words between them, while J, Q and V end none at all and U ends exactly one: BAYOU.
Which letter starts the most five-letter words?
S, and it is not close. As in our no-repeat letters guide, we do not have the game's official answer list, so every number here comes from the two lists behind our own tools. In the 2,315-word common list that the Wordle solver treats as likely answers, 366 words start with S. That is 15.8 percent. C is second with 198 and B third with 173, so those three letters open almost a third of the list (31.8 percent).
The 12,970-word full list behind our 5-letter word pages agrees on the order. S opens 1,565 words, C opens 922 and B opens 909, with P and T close behind. If you want to browse them, the words starting with S, C and B pages list every one.
Which letters end the most five-letter words?
That depends on which list you ask, and the gap is the most useful thing on this page. In the full list, S ends 3,958 words, 30.5 percent of everything. Most of those are inflected forms. 2,652 of them are a word from our 4-letter list with an S added, like BIRDS or JUMPS.
The common list behaves differently. Only 36 of its words end in S, and they are words like GLASS, CROSS, BONUS and VIRUS. Its endings are dominated by E, with 424 words, and Y, with 364. T, R and L follow, and those five letters end 60.9 percent of common words.
| Letter | Starts (common) | Ends (common) | Starts (full) | Ends (full) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| S | 366 | 36 | 1,565 | 3,958 |
| C | 198 | 31 | 922 | 127 |
| B | 173 | 11 | 909 | 59 |
| T | 149 | 253 | 815 | 727 |
| P | 142 | 56 | 859 | 147 |
| A | 141 | 64 | 736 | 680 |
| R | 105 | 212 | 628 | 673 |
| E | 72 | 424 | 303 | 1,522 |
| Y | 6 | 364 | 181 | 1,301 |
| U | 33 | 1 | 189 | 67 |
| X | 0 | 8 | 16 | 70 |
| V | 43 | 0 | 242 | 4 |
| Q | 23 | 0 | 78 | 4 |
| J | 20 | 0 | 202 | 3 |
Which letters almost never end a five-letter word?
J, Q and V. Not one word in our common list ends with any of them, even though V starts 43 common words, Q starts 23 and J starts 20. The full list finds only a handful: AFLAJ, BASIJ and FALAJ for J; QAJAQ, TALAQ, TRANQ and UMIAQ for Q; GANEV, OLLAV, PAREV and SCHAV for V. You can see how thin those pages are on the ending in V and ending in J lists.
U is nearly as rare. Only BAYOU ends in U among common words, though U starts 33 of them. Z ends four (BLITZ, FRITZ, TOPAZ, WALTZ), and X ends eight, including INDEX, RELAX and DETOX.
Which letters are lopsided?
Some letters strongly prefer one end. Y starts just six common words, YACHT, YEARN, YEAST, YIELD, YOUNG and YOUTH, yet ends 364. E starts 72 and ends 424. B leans the other way, opening 173 common words and closing only 11, among them CLIMB, THUMB and SHRUB. X never starts a common word, and the 16 full-list words that open with it are things like XENON, XYLEM and XEROX. Q is the tidiest case: all 23 common words that start with it start with QU.
How does this help in Wordle?
It tells you where to try a yellow letter. A yellow S on our common list is about ten times as likely to belong in the first slot as the last. A yellow Y or E usually goes at the end. A yellow V, J or Q can be ruled out of slot five straight away. Positions matter for openers too, which is part of why the starting words guide rates SLATE and CRANE so well. If you have a letter you think appears twice, the double-letter guide covers where pairs tend to sit.