Guides and word lists
Short, specific and built from the same word data the solvers use, so the counts here are real counts rather than numbers copied from somewhere else. These are the lists that change how you play rather than the ones that pad out a page.
Start with these
Four lists, each built from the same word data the solvers use. The first two are the ones that actually change how you play.
All 107 two-letter words
The single most valuable list in either game. Every two-letter word with its score in both games and what it actually means, grouped by opening letter so you can learn it in blocks. This is what makes parallel plays possible and what rescues a rack full of vowels.
Q words without U
All 21 of them, with meanings. Stops a Q from costing you a turn.
Five-letter words
Broken down by opening letter, with how many of each are common. Built for Wordle.
How the word list works
Which dictionary we use, what we added to it, and what is deliberately missing.
What is in the dictionary
171,280 words in total, spread very unevenly across the lengths. The shape of this chart explains a lot about both games: there are only 96 two-letter words to learn, but more than 28,000 at eight letters, which is why a seven-tile bonus feels so hard to find.
The short end is learnable
96 two-letter words, 972 three-letter words. Between them that is barely a thousand words, and knowing them well is worth more at the board than a vague memory of ten thousand long ones.
The long end is not
There are 28,506 eight-letter words. Nobody memorises those. What experienced players learn instead is the endings and prefixes that build them, which is a list of about twenty things rather than thirty thousand.