Word Finder

What is the Word Finder?

It's a flexible browser for the entire English dictionary. Use it for crossword puzzles, vocabulary research, finding words with a specific letter combination, or building word lists for games and learning.

How Filters Combine

All filters work together. A word must satisfy every non-empty filter to appear in your results. Leave a filter blank to ignore it.

Tip: combining "Starts with" and "Ends with" is a fast way to find rhyming or pattern-matched words.

When to Use Word Finder

Word Finder is the “browse-the-dictionary” tool — not for unscrambling a specific rack, but for surfacing every word matching a pattern across the full English dictionary.

• Crossword preparation — learn every 5-letter word starting with J, every word ending in -ZY, every word containing X.
• Scrabble training — the fastest way to memorise the J/Q/X/Z word families is to filter by starting letter and length.
• Spelling practice — teachers building word lists by phonetic pattern, prefix, or suffix.
• Trivia and word games — “name 10 words that start with KN” and similar party challenges.
• Writers and lyricists — find every word that ends with a specific rhyming sound.
• ESL vocabulary building — group words by length or pattern to study in batches.

Word Finder vs the Other ScrambleWise Tools

You have four “find me a word” tools on this site, and each solves a different problem. Quick guide to which one you actually want:

• Word Finder (this tool). Use when you know the shape of the word — length, opening letters, ending letters, or a substring — but not the whole word. Best for pattern research and vocabulary browsing across the full dictionary.
• Word Unscrambler. Use when you have a specific set of jumbled letters and want every valid English word you can build from them. Handles subsets — a 7-letter rack returns 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-letter words.
• Anagram Solver. Like the Unscrambler but only returns words that use ALL your letters, not subsets. Best for classic anagram puzzles where the answer must consume every letter.
• Scrabble Cheat. Combines Unscrambler logic with Scrabble scoring — returns words ranked by tile points, with blank-tile support and dictionary switching.
• Crossword Solver. For fixed-length patterns with known letters in specific positions — c_t returns cat, cot, cut. Different problem from all of the above.

Rule of thumb: got letters? Use Unscrambler, Anagram, or Scrabble Cheat. Got a pattern with blanks? Use Crossword Solver. Just want to browse the dictionary by prefix, suffix, or substring? You’re already in the right place.

Letter Frequency in English — And Why It Matters

English letter frequency isn’t just trivia. It drives every word game you play.

Rough frequency ranking of English letters (approximate percentage of typical text):

• Top tier (over 6%): E (12.7%), T (9.1%), A (8.2%), O (7.5%), I (7.0%), N (6.7%), S (6.3%), H (6.1%), R (6.0%)
• Mid tier (2–5%): D, L, C, U, M, W, F, G, Y, P, B
• Low tier (under 2%): V, K
• Rare tier (under 0.2%): J, X, Q, Z

This is why Scrabble and Words With Friends assign low tile points to E, T, A, N, and high points to Q, Z, J. The scoring is calibrated to text frequency — rare letters are worth more because they’re rare, which balances the game.

Practical uses of the pattern. If you’re stuck on a crossword blank, try common consonants (T, N, S, R) before rare ones. If you’re managing a Scrabble rack, the E and I positions are more flexible than Q or Z positions — keep the rare letters until a scoring square appears. If you’re building word lists for teaching, letter frequency roughly predicts word recognition rates for beginner readers.

Same Words, Different Games

Each word game applies different scoring and dictionary rules to the same base of English words. The Word Finder helps with all of them, but the training approach shifts by game.

• Scrabble. Uses TWL (North America) or Collins Scrabble Words (rest of the world). 100 tiles, scored by frequency-weighted values, board multipliers (double letter, triple word). Longer words unlock bingo bonuses (+50 for using all 7 tiles).
• Words With Friends. Uses its own proprietary dictionary (close to ENABLE). Similar scoring to Scrabble but tile values differ — H is 3 points in WWF vs 4 in Scrabble; Y is 4 in both. Board layout also shifts the strategy.
• Boggle. Adjacency rules on a 4x4 or 5x5 grid; longer words score more, but only paths where consecutive letters physically touch (including diagonals) count. Rewards short, high-frequency words that fit multiple grid paths.
• Bananagrams. No board, no scoring — just build a crossword-style grid from your tiles fastest. Rewards fluidity across word lengths and quick recognition of short connectors.

Same word list matters differently. A 6-letter word with common letters is a fine Scrabble play but underscored in Boggle, where adjacency is the real constraint. Learning which words fit which game changes your training approach.

For the dictionary side of this, see our guide to TWL vs SOWPODS vs ENABLE — the three main Scrabble word lists and which one your game uses.

Searching the Dictionary

Combine filters for tighter searches. A few examples that come up regularly:

• Starts with QU, exact length 5 — useful when you have Q+U+blanks in Scrabble and need a 5-letter play.
• Contains XY, exact length 4 — finds short -XY words like OXEN and ONYX-adjacent patterns.
• Ends with -OLOGY — scan every “study of” word for vocabulary work or crossword themes.
• Contains a rare letter combination — type any uncommon pair as a substring; rare patterns return few results.

The default dictionary covers ~370,000 words. Switch to the ENABLE list (~172,000 words) for tournament Scrabble or Words with Friends contexts.