We counted every letter in two lists of five-letter words. The first is 2,017 everyday words, used as a proxy for familiar puzzle answers. The second is our full dictionary of 14,855 words, which includes obscure words a game might accept as guesses. Both lists are the ones our Wordle solver uses.
Methodology: common-words.txt contains five-letter entries from our full list that also
appear in ENABLE and have a wordfreq Zipf frequency
of at least 3.0, with simple -S plurals of four-letter words excluded. It is a frequency-filtered
proxy, not an official Wordle answer corpus. Percentages below describe these two lists,
not the probability of a letter appearing in an official puzzle answer.
Key takeaways
- E is the most common letter. It makes up 11.4% of all letters in everyday words and appears in about half of them. A, R, O and T round out the top five.
- S is the most common first letter, starting 15.2% of everyday words. C, B and T come next.
- The second letter is usually a vowel. A and O each fill that slot in about one word in seven.
- E dominates the last two positions. It is the most common fourth letter and the most common last letter, and Y is the second most common ending.
- S at the end is a trap. In the full dictionary 29% of words end in S, including plurals like LAMPS or LINKS. Only 3% of our everyday words do; that proxy list excludes simple -S plurals of four-letter words.
- Repeated letters are common. About 32% of everyday words use some letter twice, so don't rule out a double just because you haven't seen one yet.
Most common letters overall
Each letter's share of all the letters in each list. The bar shows everyday words, scaled to the most common letter.
| Letter | Chart | Everyday words | All words |
|---|---|---|---|
| E | 11.4% | 10.0% | |
| A | 8.6% | 9.6% | |
| R | 7.9% | 6.3% | |
| O | 6.7% | 7.0% | |
| T | 6.3% | 5.0% | |
| S | 5.9% | 9.9% | |
| I | 5.9% | 5.9% | |
| L | 5.6% | 5.1% | |
| N | 5.1% | 4.7% | |
| D | 4.2% | 3.7% | |
| C | 4.1% | 3.0% | |
| H | 3.4% | 2.7% | |
| U | 3.4% | 3.9% | |
| Y | 3.1% | 3.2% | |
| P | 2.9% | 3.3% | |
| M | 2.8% | 3.3% | |
| G | 2.4% | 2.5% | |
| B | 2.3% | 2.5% | |
| F | 2.0% | 1.7% | |
| K | 1.8% | 2.4% | |
| W | 1.6% | 1.5% | |
| V | 1.3% | 1.1% | |
| X | 0.5% | 0.4% | |
| Z | 0.3% | 0.7% | |
| J | 0.3% | 0.5% | |
| Q | 0.2% | 0.2% |
Letter frequency by position
The share of everyday five-letter words that have each letter in each position. Brighter cells are more common. Read down a column to see which letters usually start or end a word.
| Letter | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 6.0 | 14.2 | 12.4 | 6.9 | 3.5 |
| B | 7.4 | 0.5 | 2.2 | 1.1 | 0.4 |
| C | 8.4 | 1.3 | 2.6 | 6.6 | 1.3 |
| D | 4.4 | 0.7 | 3.7 | 2.6 | 9.5 |
| E | 2.6 | 11.2 | 7.4 | 17.9 | 18.1 |
| F | 6.4 | 0.1 | 0.9 | 1.3 | 1.0 |
| G | 4.1 | 0.3 | 3.4 | 2.8 | 1.5 |
| H | 3.5 | 6.4 | 0.5 | 1.2 | 5.6 |
| I | 1.1 | 10.0 | 11.0 | 6.9 | 0.4 |
| J | 1.1 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.0 |
| K | 1.0 | 0.3 | 1.0 | 2.2 | 4.3 |
| L | 4.3 | 7.4 | 4.6 | 6.1 | 5.8 |
| M | 5.4 | 1.2 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 1.5 |
| N | 1.9 | 3.0 | 6.9 | 7.5 | 5.9 |
| O | 1.5 | 13.8 | 9.5 | 5.7 | 3.1 |
| P | 6.2 | 2.4 | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.9 |
| Q | 1.0 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| R | 4.7 | 11.1 | 7.8 | 7.0 | 8.6 |
| S | 15.2 | 0.8 | 3.5 | 6.9 | 3.3 |
| T | 6.8 | 3.4 | 5.5 | 5.9 | 9.9 |
| U | 1.1 | 7.4 | 5.5 | 3.0 | 0.1 |
| V | 1.8 | 0.5 | 2.3 | 1.9 | 0.0 |
| W | 3.5 | 1.9 | 1.1 | 0.9 | 0.5 |
| X | 0.0 | 0.5 | 1.1 | 0.1 | 0.4 |
| Y | 0.4 | 0.9 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 13.2 |
| Z | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.8 | 0.2 |
Top five letters in each position
| Position | Everyday words | All words |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | S C B T F | S P B C M |
| 2 | A O E R I | A O E I U |
| 3 | A I O R E | A R I N O |
| 4 | E N R A I | E A I T N |
| 5 | E Y T D R | S E Y A D |
By position in the full dictionary
The same table for all 14,855 words. S leads the last column in this list, which includes plurals.
| Letter | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 5.8 | 18.1 | 9.2 | 8.9 | 6.0 |
| B | 6.8 | 0.7 | 2.6 | 1.9 | 0.5 |
| C | 6.5 | 1.4 | 3.1 | 3.1 | 1.0 |
| D | 4.9 | 0.7 | 3.1 | 3.7 | 5.9 |
| E | 2.2 | 12.5 | 6.7 | 17.0 | 11.7 |
| F | 4.3 | 0.2 | 1.4 | 1.7 | 0.6 |
| G | 4.6 | 0.6 | 2.9 | 3.3 | 1.2 |
| H | 3.6 | 4.1 | 1.0 | 1.9 | 2.9 |
| I | 1.2 | 10.8 | 7.9 | 7.1 | 2.6 |
| J | 1.5 | 0.1 | 0.4 | 0.3 | 0.0 |
| K | 2.9 | 0.8 | 2.2 | 3.8 | 2.1 |
| L | 4.2 | 5.2 | 6.5 | 5.8 | 3.6 |
| M | 6.4 | 1.4 | 3.9 | 3.0 | 1.5 |
| N | 3.2 | 2.6 | 7.5 | 6.0 | 4.2 |
| O | 2.4 | 16.3 | 7.5 | 5.6 | 3.4 |
| P | 7.6 | 1.7 | 2.9 | 3.1 | 1.1 |
| Q | 0.7 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| R | 5.4 | 6.9 | 9.1 | 5.4 | 5.0 |
| S | 11.2 | 0.8 | 4.1 | 4.0 | 29.2 |
| T | 5.9 | 1.7 | 4.9 | 7.0 | 5.4 |
| U | 1.5 | 9.2 | 5.1 | 3.3 | 0.6 |
| V | 1.9 | 0.4 | 1.9 | 1.2 | 0.0 |
| W | 2.9 | 1.2 | 2.1 | 1.0 | 0.5 |
| X | 0.1 | 0.4 | 1.0 | 0.1 | 0.6 |
| Y | 1.4 | 2.0 | 1.7 | 0.8 | 10.3 |
| Z | 0.8 | 0.2 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 0.3 |
Using this in Wordle
A strong first guess tests the most common letters in the spots they usually occupy. CRANE and SLATE both put A in the middle and E at the end, and each tries at least two more letters from the top ten. After your first guess, lean on the position table: if you know the word has an E but not where, the fourth and fifth spots are the likeliest.
Once you have a few colours on the board, the Wordle calculator does the counting for you and shows every word that still fits.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most common letter in five-letter words?
E. It makes up about 11% of the letters in everyday five-letter words, followed by A, R, O and T.
What letter do most five-letter words start with?
S. About 15% of everyday five-letter words start with S, well ahead of C, B and T.
What is the most common last letter?
E, followed by Y, T and D in our everyday proxy list. In our full dictionary, which includes plurals such as LAMPS, S is the most common last letter. These rankings describe our lists, not an official answer corpus.
Which letters are the rarest?
Q, J, Z and X. Each makes up less than 1% of the letters in everyday five-letter words.
Where does this data come from?
From LexaCalc's solver lists: about 2,000 everyday five-letter words and a full dictionary of about 14,800. The everyday list is filtered by wordfreq frequency and ENABLE membership, excluding simple -S plurals of four-letter words. It is a proxy, not an official Wordle answer corpus; percentages describe these lists. The numbers are recalculated whenever those lists change.