5 Letter Word Finder

The 5 Letter Word Finder lists every 5-letter word that fits the clues you already have. Enter your green, yellow and grey letters from a daily word puzzle and it filters more than 8,500 English words as you type. You get a live count of what’s left and a suggested next guess. It’s free and works for Wordle-style puzzles, crosswords and other word games.

How to use the word finder

1. Green letters. Type each green letter into its box in the top row. If your second letter is a green R, put R in box two.
2. Yellow letters. Type each yellow letter into the yellow box for the column where it appeared. If an E showed up yellow in the third spot, put E in yellow box three. A box can hold several letters.
3. Grey letters. Type every letter that came back grey into the grey field, in any order.
4. Read the results. The count and the list update on every keystroke. Common words are outlined and listed first.
5. Pick a guess. Use the Best next guess, or tap any word in the list to copy it so you can paste it into your game.

The Starts with, Ends with and Contains fields are quick filters for crosswords and other word games. “Contains” counts repeats, so entering OO only shows words with at least two O’s. Tick Common words only to hide obscure words. Switch to Browse by letter to see every 5-letter word that starts with a given letter.

How green, yellow and grey work

Daily five-letter word puzzles colour each letter of your guess, and each colour tells the finder something different:

• Green means the letter is in the word, in that exact spot. The finder keeps only words with that letter in that position.
• Yellow means the letter is in the word but not in that spot. The finder keeps words that contain the letter somewhere else, and removes any word with it in the yellow column.
• Grey means the letter isn’t in the word, or at least not any more times than you’ve already found it. The finder removes every word that uses it.

Repeated letters are where most people go wrong. Say you guess SPEED and the first E is green but the second is grey. That doesn’t mean there’s no E. It means there’s exactly one. Enter the green E and add E to the grey field too. The finder reads a grey letter that is also green or yellow as “no extra copies”, so it keeps words with one E and removes words with two. Repeats are common: about a third of the words in the list have a repeated letter.

Good starting words

A good first guess tests the letters that show up most often, with no repeats. These openers are all in the finder’s common-word list:

• SLATE, CRANE, STARE, TRACE, CRATE: strong all-round openers that test S, T, R, L, C and N alongside A and E.
• RAISE, ARISE, IRATE: three vowels plus R and S or T.
• ADIEU, AUDIO: four vowels in one guess. Follow up with consonants, such as CLOTH or MOUND.
• ROAST, LATER, ALERT: good second guesses if your opener missed.

The Best next guess picks from the words that still match. Letters found in about half of them score highest, because they split the list best whatever colour comes back.

Letter frequency tips

• E, A and R lead. Among common 5-letter words, E appears in about 45%, A in about 42% and R in about 36%. O, I, T, L, S and N come next.
• Watch the last letter. Common answers end in E or Y more than anything else. S is the most common last letter across the whole dictionary, but that’s mostly plurals, and daily puzzles rarely use plain plurals.
• Save rare letters for later. Q, J, X and Z each turn up in about 2% of words or fewer. Guess them only when the list of matches points to them.
• Test new letters. When lots of words are left, guess letters you haven’t tried yet, even if that guess can’t be the answer.

FAQ

Where do the words come from?

The list comes from ENABLE, a public-domain English word list used by many word games. We kept the 5-letter words and removed slurs and offensive terms. We also marked about 3,200 everyday words as common so they appear first.

Is this the official answer list for any game?

No. This is a general dictionary of 5-letter words, not a copy of any game’s answer list. Tick Common words only to focus on likely answers.

Why are there no matches?

Usually there’s a typo, or a letter is both grey and green or yellow when the word really has two of it. Check your grey letters first.

Does it work on my phone?

Yes. Tap a box to type, tap a word to copy it, and scroll the results list. Your clues aren’t sent to a server. All the searching happens in your browser.

Ready to put it to work? Play our free Wordle game, take on four boards at once in Quad Word, change one letter at a time in Word Ladder, or find as many words as you can in Spelling Bee.