All four constraints at once, rather than one per page. Five-letter words starting with S and ending in A is thirty words, not six hundred — and that is usually the difference between a list and an answer.
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Not all known letters narrow a list equally. A first letter is the weakest constraint you can have — 597 five-letter words start with S. A known last letter cuts harder, and a known middle letter hardest of all, because the middle is where English is least predictable.
So if you have a choice about which position to work out next, take the third. Combining two constraints is where this becomes useful: S at the front is 597 words, S at the front and A at the end is thirty.
The contains box is the underused one. It takes more than a single letter — searching for ough returns 93 words across every length, which is a faster route to thought than working through the alphabet one position at a time.
The worst position in any word game, because guessing costs a turn and there may be six candidates. _IGHT is light, might, night, right, sight, tight, fight, eight.
Put the known letters in the contains box and set the length. You get the full list in one go, and then the decision is about which letters you have already ruled out — which is a different and much easier problem than trying to remember words.
Crosswords
A clue with three crossing letters is exactly this problem. Fill in what you have, set the length, read the shortlist.
Teaching phonics
Every word containing a given cluster — ough, tion, str — in one list, which is otherwise a long afternoon with a dictionary.
Naming things
Words ending in a particular sound, or starting with a specific letter, when you want something short and memorable.
Poetry and lyrics
Near-rhymes by ending, when a true rhyme is not available and something close will carry the line.
A 57,000-word English list, loaded into your browser — no server, no request per search, nothing sent anywhere. It is close to the North American tournament word list, which means proper nouns, hyphenated words and abbreviations are excluded.
Word lists differ between dictionaries and between editions, so a word appearing here is not a guarantee that a particular game will accept it. The word unscrambler runs on the same list and explains where the lists diverge, including the full set of two-letter words.
Everything here runs in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.
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