8 Letter Words By Opening Letter

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What Is In These Lists

There are 40,525 words of exactly 8 letters, and this page splits them into 26 lists by how they open. The largest opening is S. Every list below carries the full set for its opening, scored for both Scrabble and Words With Friends.

In Scrabble the best of them is PIZZAZZY at 49 points, then ZYZZYVAS at 44. The set averages 13.3 points a word, and the cheapest is UTTEREST at 8. Words With Friends uses different tile values, so the order changes: there the best is PIZZAZZY at 49, and the average is 15.4. If you play both games, that gap is the reason a word worth opening with in one is a waste of a turn in the other.

3,166 of these, 8 percent, carry a J, Q, X or Z. Those are the four tiles that decide close games, and they are the reason to learn a list like this one rather than trust the rack. The ones here are PIZZAZZY, ZYZZYVAS, QUIZZIFY, QUIZZERY, BAZAZZES, BEZAZZES and 3,160 more.

4,092 groups of these are anagrams of each other. The largest is ANGRIEST, ANGSTIER, ASTRINGE, GANISTER, GANTRIES, GRANITES, 11 words from the same 8 letters. Anagram pairs matter more than they look: if you can see one you can usually see the other, and the second one often fits a space the first will not.

9,472 contain a doubled letter, AARDVARK, AARDWOLF, AASVOGEL, ABATTOIR, ABBACIES for instance. Doubles are what people miss when they unscramble in their head, because the eye reads past the repeat.

14 of them use a Q with no U: INQILABS, MBAQANGA, QABALAHS, QABALISM, QABALIST, QAIMAQAM. That is the single most valuable thing on this page. A Q with no U to go with it is a lost turn for most players, and the full list is on words with Q and no U.

Across all 324,200 letters used by these words, the commonest after the pattern itself are E at 37,690, S at 31,005, I at 26,682, A at 25,449, R at 23,125, N at 20,219. The rarest are X, Q, J. That distribution is what makes a set like this easier or harder to spot on a board than its size suggests.

They end in S 14,187 times, in E 4,490 times, in D 4,443 times. Endings are how a word attaches to what is already on the board, so if you are hunting for somewhere to put one of these, the ending is the part to look at first, not the start.

They begin with 26 different letters. The commonest openings are S with 5,136, C with 3,610, P with 3,180, and every letter of the alphabet opens at least one. Once you know how a word ends, the opening is the other half of finding somewhere to put it, and a set that opens with only 26 of the 26 letters is a much shorter search than its size suggests.