Find a Word With Missing Letters: Free Fill-in-the-Blank Word Finder

By Syed Abdullah Shah · October 11, 2026

You know the word starts with C, has an A in the middle and ends in E, but the other two letters just won’t come. It happens in crosswords, Wordle, word searches and quiz games. The quickest fix is a missing-letter word finder: type the letters you know, mark the gaps, and see every word that fits. You can try it right here:

Choose Pattern in the drop-down, type your letters with a ? for each missing one, and press Search.

How to find a word with missing letters

1. Count the letters. Make sure you know how long the word is. A crossword grid or a Wordle row tells you this.
2. Write the letters you know in their places. Use a ? for every letter you don’t know. A five-letter word starting with C, with A third and E last, becomes C?A?E.
3. Search. Choose Pattern and type the pattern. The length is set automatically from what you type.
4. Pick from the list. Common words are highlighted, so the most likely answer is easy to spot.

You can also type an underscore (_) or a full stop (.) instead of a question mark. They all mean “any letter”. Patterns work for words of 3 to 7 letters.

Why it works so well: every letter counts

Each letter you add removes a huge share of the possibilities. Here’s what happens with a five-letter word, using our list of 8,636 five-letter words:

Three known letters took the list from over eight thousand words to thirteen. That’s why even a partly solved word is usually just one search away.

Examples for every word length

Click any pattern to run the search in our word finder:

• 3 letters: C?T finds CAT, COT and CUT.
• 4 letters: ?OO? finds 53 common words, including BOOK, COOL, FOOD, MOON and ROOF.
• 5 letters: S?A?E finds SHADE, SHAKE, SHAPE, SHARE, SKATE, SLATE, SNAKE, SPACE and more.
• 5 letters: ?OU?D finds BOUND, COULD, FOUND, HOUND, MOUND, POUND, ROUND, SOUND, WOULD and WOUND.
• 6 letters: L?TT?R finds LATTER, LETTER and LITTER.
• 7 letters: M?SS?NG finds MISSING and MESSING.

For longer patterns, the list gets short very quickly. Many seven-letter patterns with four known letters have only one or two answers.

Using it for crosswords

Crosswords are the classic missing-letter puzzle. The crossing answers give you some letters, and the clue tells you the meaning. A good routine:

• Fill in the crossings first. Every crossing word you solve adds a letter to the hard ones.
• Search the pattern, then read the clue again. A list of 10 or 20 candidates is easy to check against the clue, and the right word usually stands out.
• Watch for plurals and tenses. If the clue is plural (“Small dogs”), the answer often ends in S. If it’s past tense, think -ED.
• Two-word answers count as one. Crossword answers ignore spaces, so a seven-letter answer could be two words, such as GOODBYE or AIRPORT.

Using it for Wordle

In Wordle, green letters are letters you know in place, so they make a perfect pattern. If you have green S, A and E in the first, third and fifth spots, search S?A?E.

But Wordle also gives you yellow and grey letters, which a plain pattern can’t use. For that, switch to the Wordle solver on our 5 letter word finder. Put greens in their boxes, yellows where you tried them and greys in the grey field, and you’ll only see words that match every clue. If you keep finding the same ending with lots of possible first letters, such as ?IGHT or ?OUND, read our guide to Wordle traps.

Tips when you’re really stuck

• Try the vowels. Most English words have a vowel every two or three letters. If your pattern is ?R?N?, try A, E, I, O or U in the gaps: ARENA, BRINE, BRING, CRANE.
• Think about common endings. Five-letter words often end in E, Y, ED, ER or CH. Six-letter words often end in ER, LE, ING or LY.
• Check double letters. If nothing fits, the missing letter may repeat one you already have, as in L?TT?R or B?LL?.
• Have a jumble instead? If you know the letters but not their order, use Unscramble mode instead of Pattern.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find a word when I only know some of the letters?

Type the letters you know in their positions and a ? for each letter you don’t know, then search in Pattern mode. For example, C?A?E finds CRANE, CRATE, CHASE and other five-letter words that fit.

What does the question mark mean?

Each ? stands for exactly one unknown letter. C?T has three letters, so it only finds three-letter words such as CAT, COT and CUT.

How do I find what letters are missing from a word?

Write the word with ? where the gaps are, such as P?Z?LE, and search. Every real word that fits is shown, in this case PUZZLE, so you can see which letters fill the gaps.

Does it work for any word length?

Pattern search works for words of 3 to 7 letters, which covers most crossword and word-game answers. For longer words, start with the most distinctive part and browse our lists, such as 6 letter words.

Can I use it for Scrabble or Words With Friends?

Yes. If a word on the board leaves a gap, such as a three-letter space between two tiles, search the pattern to see what fits. To see what you can make from the tiles on your rack, use Unscramble mode instead.

Is it free?

Yes. The word finder is free to use, with no sign-up, and works on phones, tablets and computers.

Word counts come from our own word lists of 3 to 7 letter words.