How We Build Our Word Lists
Every list on 5lettersword.com comes from the same word file and the same rules. This page explains where the words come from, how we decide which ones are common or likely Wordle answers, how the “best guess” scores work, and how we fix mistakes.
Lists last checked: 29 October 2026. Maintained by: Syed Abdullah Shah.
1. The word list: ENABLE
All valid words come from ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon), a public-domain word list used by many word games and Scrabble-style apps. Our copy contains 8,636 five-letter words. We use it as it is: we don’t add made-up words, and we don’t remove words because they look odd. That is why lists include rare entries such as CRWTH or PHPHT.
2. Common words: 3,155
A valid word isn’t always a word people know. To separate everyday words from obscure ones, we match every word against FrequencyWords by Hermit Dave (CC BY-SA 4.0), a list of how often words appear in a large collection of English film and TV subtitles. Words that appear often enough are marked common. For five letters that gives 3,155 common words. The other 5,481 (63%) are valid but uncommon.
3. Likely Wordle answers: 2,120
Wordle’s answers are everyday words, and it mostly avoids simple plurals (BOOKS) and simple past tenses (JUMPED). So, within the common words, we mark 2,120 likely answers: well-known words that aren’t just a shorter word plus S, or plus ED. A few everyday forms such as TRIED and CRIED stay in, because they are words in their own right.
On our lists, likely answers are highlighted and shown first. We don’t use or publish the official Wordle answer list, and we’re not affiliated with Wordle or The New York Times.
4. How “best guesses” are scored
For each length we count how many of the likely answers contain each letter. For five letters, E appears in the most likely answers, then A, R, O and T. A word’s score is the sum of those shares for each different letter it uses, so repeated letters earn nothing extra.
The “Best Wordle guesses” on each list are the highest-scoring likely answers on that list with five different letters. We skip a word if it shares four letters with one already picked, so you get variety instead of five anagrams. On short lists, common words fill any gaps.
The Wordle helper goes further: it plays every possible guess against every answer still left and ranks guesses by how many answers they leave on average.
5. Letter positions and quick facts
The quick facts on each page (how many words, how many are common, the most frequent letters, the top Scrabble word) are counted directly from that page’s own words every time the list changes. Scrabble scores use the standard English tile values, and our Scrabble guide also respects the number of tiles in a real set.
6. We test it: 50 openers against 2,120 answers
To check that the scores mean something in a real game, we played the Wordle helper’s own strategy against all 2,120 likely answers, starting with each of 50 popular openers. CRATE and TRACE solved in 3.42 guesses on average, CRANE in 3.44 and SLATE in 3.44. Vowel-heavy openers did worst: ADIEU averaged 3.64 and AUDIO 3.65, and AUDIO was one of only five openers that failed a game in six guesses. The full results are in the table below.
| Rank | Opener | Avg guesses | Worst game | Solved in 3 or fewer | Hard mode avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CRATE | 3.42 | 6 | 58.1% | 3.52 |
| 2 | TRACE | 3.42 | 6 | 58.2% | 3.52 |
| 3 | CRANE | 3.44 | 6 | 58.3% | 3.54 |
| 4 | SLATE | 3.44 | 7 | 57.4% | 3.51 |
| 5 | CARTE | 3.44 | 6 | 56.6% | 3.53 |
| 6 | LEAST | 3.45 | 6 | 56.3% | 3.51 |
| 7 | TRADE | 3.45 | 6 | 56.5% | 3.55 |
| 8 | STARE | 3.46 | 6 | 57.4% | 3.56 |
| 9 | REACT | 3.46 | 6 | 55.2% | 3.54 |
| 10 | STALE | 3.46 | 7 | 55.9% | 3.54 |
| 11 | SNARE | 3.46 | 6 | 56.3% | 3.56 |
| 12 | CATER | 3.46 | 6 | 55.3% | 3.55 |
| 13 | TRAIL | 3.46 | 6 | 55.1% | 3.55 |
| 14 | TEARS | 3.47 | 7 | 55.7% | 3.54 |
| 15 | STORE | 3.47 | 6 | 55.8% | 3.56 |
| 16 | ROAST | 3.47 | 6 | 55.6% | 3.56 |
| 17 | ALINE | 3.48 | 6 | 55.6% | 3.58 |
| 18 | ALTER | 3.48 | 6 | 54.7% | 3.57 |
| 19 | RAISE | 3.48 | 6 | 55.6% | 3.58 |
| 20 | TONER | 3.48 | 6 | 54.1% | 3.56 |
| 21 | TRIES | 3.48 | 6 | 54.3% | 3.55 |
| 22 | ALERT | 3.48 | 6 | 54.5% | 3.58 |
| 23 | REALS | 3.48 | 6 | 54.8% | 3.58 |
| 24 | AROSE | 3.48 | 6 | 55.3% | 3.59 |
| 25 | LEARN | 3.48 | 6 | 54.4% | 3.56 |
| 26 | SCARE | 3.48 | 6 | 54.4% | 3.58 |
| 27 | SIREN | 3.48 | 6 | 54.4% | 3.57 |
| 28 | SNORE | 3.48 | 6 | 54.4% | 3.56 |
| 29 | LATER | 3.48 | 6 | 53.8% | 3.58 |
| 30 | LITRE | 3.48 | 6 | 53.3% | 3.58 |
| 31 | TALES | 3.48 | 6 | 53.9% | 3.55 |
| 32 | TENOR | 3.48 | 6 | 53.6% | 3.56 |
| 33 | ALONE | 3.48 | 6 | 54.6% | 3.60 |
| 34 | AISLE | 3.49 | 6 | 54.4% | 3.58 |
| 35 | RATES | 3.49 | 6 | 54.1% | 3.56 |
| 36 | ARISE | 3.49 | 6 | 55.2% | 3.59 |
| 37 | CANOE | 3.49 | 6 | 53.9% | 3.58 |
| 38 | CARES | 3.49 | 6 | 53.2% | 3.58 |
| 39 | LANES | 3.49 | 6 | 53.4% | 3.57 |
| 40 | ARIEL | 3.50 | 6 | 53.7% | 3.60 |
| 41 | LASER | 3.50 | 6 | 53.2% | 3.60 |
| 42 | SENOR | 3.50 | 6 | 53.0% | 3.56 |
| 43 | ATONE | 3.50 | 6 | 53.1% | 3.60 |
| 44 | SOLAR | 3.50 | 6 | 53.1% | 3.59 |
| 45 | RENAL | 3.50 | 6 | 52.2% | 3.58 |
| 46 | EARNS | 3.52 | 7 | 52.2% | 3.59 |
| 47 | HOUSE | 3.59 | 6 | 47.5% | 3.69 |
| 48 | ABOUT | 3.62 | 6 | 43.6% | 3.70 |
| 49 | ADIEU | 3.63 | 6 | 43.0% | 3.75 |
| 50 | AUDIO | 3.65 | 7 | 42.6% | 3.74 |
7. Corrections and changelog
Spotted a missing word, a wrong count, or a word that shouldn’t be marked common? Tell us. We check every report against the word file and update the list, usually within a few days.
- 29 October 2026: Added this page, a “last checked” date and author line on every list, and a “How we chose these” note on every Best guesses block.
- 26 September 2026: Site launched with the ENABLE list (8,636 five-letter words), 3,155 common and 2,120 likely answers.