3 letter words
All 969 three-letter words, listed in full rather than hidden behind a click. Filter by a letter you know, a position you have confirmed, or letters you have already ruled out.
How many three-letter words there are
969, which is 2.5% of the whole list. They are printed here in alphabetical order, complete — this page holds the entire set rather than a sample of it, because a partial list is worse than useless when you are checking whether a particular word exists.
A is the busiest opening letter with 71 of them, and 84 end in E. 29 contain no vowel at all.
868 use three different letters with nothing repeated, and 51 contain a doubled letter. On standard tiles the most expensive are ZAX (19), ZEK (16), FEZ (15), which says more about which letters are rare than about which words are useful.
Using a three-letter list well
Reading a list this size front to back is the slowest way to use it. Type the letters you are certain of into the pattern box, using a dot for the squares you do not know, and the list collapses to the handful that can still fit.
Ruling letters out narrows it faster than ruling them in, which is the opposite of most people's instinct. One excluded letter that appears in a third of the list removes a third of it in a single step, while confirming a common letter such as E barely moves the number.
If you are solving rather than browsing, the scores are worth ignoring at first. A high tile score means the word leans on rare letters, so the words at the top of that ranking are the ones least likely to be the answer you are hunting for.
Common questions
How many three letter words are there?
969 in the public-domain ENABLE list, which is what this page shows in full. Other dictionaries differ at the edges, so a game's own word list settles a challenge rather than this one.
What is the highest scoring three letter word?
ZAX, at 19 on standard tiles. That is a fact about tile rarity rather than about the word being a good play — position on the board usually matters more.
Which letter starts the most three letter words?
A, with 71 of them. At the other end, 84 finish with E.
Every word, grouped by how long it is
The complete list at each length. Three letters is a page you memorise; nine is a page you search.
Five-letter words by opening letter
The complete list for each letter, with how many there are. S is a page you scroll; X is a page you read.
- A 497
- B 589
- C 662
- D 455
- E 192
- F 429
- G 414
- H 334
- I 118
- J 133
- K 205
- L 401
- M 443
- N 200
- O 181
- P 565
- Q 53
- R 419
- S 1,053
- T 547
- U 117
- V 161
- W 295
- X 13
- Y 94
- Z 51