Letter Frequency in 5-Letter Words: The Ultimate Breakdown
Why 5-letter letter frequency is its own thing
Most classic “letter frequency” charts talk about all English text: books, articles, conversation. In that world, the usual top letters are E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, L.
But if you zoom in on only 5-letter words, the ranking shifts:
You don’t see super-short words like “a,” “to,” “of.”
You get a more “balanced” structure: usually 2–3 consonants, 2–3 vowels.
Certain letters become much more important because they fit that 5-letter pattern well.
That’s why you see different “best letters” recommended for Wordle and similar games. Researchers who looked specifically at 5-letter words consistently find that letters like A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U bubble to the top.
Overall letter frequency in 5-letter words
Different analyses use slightly different word lists, but they mostly agree on the top cluster of letters in 5-letter English words.
Across several 5-letter word datasets (including Wordle-style lists), these letters are most common overall:
A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U
One popular breakdown of five-letter words highlights this exact top ten.
In Wordle’s original solution list (2,000+ five-letter answers), another analysis of total letter counts found the top ten as:
E, A, R, O, T, L, I, S, N, C
The order shifts a bit from source to source, but the core message is the same:
Vowels E, A, O, I, U are very important
Consonants S, R, L, T, N, C appear constantly
“Exotic” letters like Q, J, X, Z are extremely rare in 5-letter words too, just like in regular English
For practical purposes, if you’re trying to cover the most ground in 5-letter words, prioritizing something like:
E, A, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U, C
will give you a lot of mileage.
How 5-letter frequencies differ from normal English text
In plain English text, the top letters are usually something like:
E, T, A, O, I, N, S, R, H, L
But for 5-letter words, several analyses point out a different top group:
A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U
Key differences:
S gets a big boost
S is already common in English, but in 5-letter words it’s even more prominent, especially at the start or end (“STARE,” “CLASS,” “LOOPS”).
E is still king, but vowels cluster in the middle
E remains very common, but in five-letter structures it dominates the fourth and fifth positions, often as a silent ending.
T and H drop slightly in importance compared to S and L
Because shorter function words (the, that, this) aren’t 5 letters, T and H lose some of their usual boost.
Meanwhile, letters like L and S thrive in 5-letter word bodies and endings.
So if you’re building strategies for word games that use 5-letter words, textbook letter frequency charts are useful but not perfect. You want data tuned to 5-letter structures.
Position-based letter frequency in 5-letter words
It’s not just which letters matter, but where they appear. Several Wordle-focused analyses broke down frequency by position (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th) in 5-letter answer lists.
Most common first letters
Across Wordle’s solution set and other 5-letter lists:
S is by far the most common first letter
Other strong starters include C, B, T, P, A, F
That matches intuition: think of “START,” “CRISP,” “BRAVE,” “TRAIN,” “PLANT,” “FAITH.”
Most common second and third letters
For 5-letter words, especially Wordle-style lists:
A dominates as a second and third letter
Other frequent second/third letters include O, R, E, I, L, U, N
Vowels cluster heavily in the 2nd and 3rd positions. That’s why patterns like:
A_
E_
O_
are so common in English, and why starting words like “AROSE”, “IRATE”, “ALERT” are popular in word puzzles.
Most common fourth and fifth letters
Analyses of Wordle’s solution list show:
E is the most common 4th and 5th letter by a landslide
The fourth position also favors N, S, A, L, I, R, C, T, O
The fifth position often ends with E, Y, T, R, L, N, S
So endings like:
-ER, -ES, -ED, -EL, -EN, -LY, -ST
are incredibly common in 5-letter words.
Double letters and common letter pairs in 5-letter words
Another pattern that matters for 5-letter words is bigrams (two-letter combos) and double letters.
A study of English bigrams shows that for 5-letter words specifically, the most common pairs include:
ES
ER
ED
These all show up constantly at the ends of 5-letter words: “CARES,” “OTHER,” “SPEED,” “LINED,” “TIMED,” “LIKES.”
Separate analyses of Wordle’s answer lists found that:
Roughly 15% or so of answers have double letters
Double E and double L are especially common repeats
E is a frequent letter in any position; L often appears as LL in the middle (“FALLS,” “WELLS”).
For 5-letter strategy, that means:
You can’t always assume “no repeats”
Watching for EE, LL, SS, TT in mid-to-late positions pays off
Practical takeaways for Wordle and word puzzles
All of this is great trivia, but here’s how it actually helps when you’re guessing 5-letter words.
1. Start with letters that cover the “big cluster”
For a first guess in a puzzle where you want maximum information, you want a mix of common vowels and consonants, no duplicates, and letters that frequently appear in 5-letter words.
Based on the data, strong letters to include are:
A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U, C
That’s why so many recommended openers look like:
AROSE
IRATE
SLATE
CRANE
SOARE
They concentrate those high-frequency letters with no repeats.
2. Pay attention to letter positions
Knowing where letters like to sit is huge:
Try an opener with S at the start or second position (since S is common at the beginning).
Use a pattern that puts A / E / O / I in the 2nd or 3rd slots, since vowels cluster there.
If you have the last letter blank late in a puzzle, consider E, Y, T, R, L, N, S first.
That’s more efficient than guessing random letters in random spots.
3. Don’t ignore repeats, especially with E and L
Since repeated letters are common in 5-letter word lists:
Be suspicious when your guess options could be something like:
LEVEL, SHEET, SKILL, SHELL, PIZZA
If you’ve already confirmed one E and nothing else fits, consider double E in the middle or at the end.
Frequency data says those doubles are not rare outliers—they’re baked into how English 5-letter words work.
4. Use common bigrams when filling in blanks
When you’re staring at something like:
_ _ E R _
_ _ _ E S
the common bigram data helps:
ER is a very frequent pair in 5-letter words
ES, ER, ED are all strong candidates for endings
So instead of guessing weird combinations, try the statistically likely ones first.
Why these patterns exist at all
The patterns above come from a mix of:
English spelling rules (-ER, -ED, -ES are common endings)
Morphology (past tense, plurals, comparative forms)
Phonetics (certain consonant clusters like ST, TR, CR feel “natural”)
Historical word formation (Latin, Greek, Germanic roots)
When you constrain words to exactly five letters, those forces push the language toward certain “shapes”:
Consonant + vowel + consonant + vowel + consonant
Starts with S/C/B/T a lot
Ends with E, S, T, D, R, N very frequently
Thus the letter frequency profile of 5-letter words becomes distinct from general English, even though it’s built from the same language.
Summary: the key facts to remember
If you only want the “cheat sheet” from all this:
Top letters in 5-letter words: A, E, S, O, R, I, L, T, N, U (with E and A especially important)
Most common first letter: S
Vowels love the 2nd and 3rd positions: A, E, O, I show up heavily there
E dominates the 4th and 5th positions, especially as an ending
Common endings: -ES, -ER, -ED, -EL, -EN, -LY, -ST
Double letters are common, especially EE and LL
“Weird” letters like Q, J, X, Z are extremely rare in 5-letter words
Once you internalize those patterns, 5-letter puzzles stop feeling random and start feeling like a data problem—and that’s where good guesses come from.
