4 Letter Words

Every Letter

A (266) · B (343) · C (305) · D (318) · E (160) · F (250) · G (272) · H (252) · I (70) · J (119) · K (202) · L (272) · M (306) · N (161) · O (156) · P (336) · Q (19) · R (261) · S (477) · T (350) · U (64) · V (112) · W (209) · Y (119) · Z (56)

A Sample Of The List

All 5,457 of them are split by first letter above, which is a shorter list to read than 5,457 words in one column. Here are the first 240 alphabetically.

What Is In This List

There are 5,457 words of exactly 4 letters in the 269,823 word dictionary, 2.0 percent of it. 25 of the 26 letters start enough of them to carry a list of their own, and the busiest is S.

In Scrabble the best of them is ZIZZ at 31 points, then ZZZS at 31. The set averages 7.6 points a word, and the cheapest is UTUS at 4. Words With Friends uses different tile values, so the order changes: there the best is JAZZ at 31, and the average is 8.6. 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.

379 of these, 7 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 ZIZZ, ZZZS, JAZZ, FIZZ, FUZZ, HIZZ and 373 more.

47 of them contain no vowel at all: BRRR, BYRL, CWMS, CYST, DRYS, FYRD, GRRL, GYMP among others. A vowel free word is the escape hatch when your rack is all consonants, and there are only a few dozen in the whole dictionary, so the ones that start with are worth memorising outright.

1,238 groups of these are anagrams of each other. The largest is ATES, EAST, EATS, ETAS, SATE, SEAT, 9 words from the same 4 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.

558 contain a doubled letter, AAHS, AALS, ABBA, ABBE, ABBS for instance. Doubles are what people miss when they unscramble in their head, because the eye reads past the repeat.

7 of them use a Q with no U: FIQH, QADI, QAID, QATS, QINS, QOPH. 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 21,828 letters used by these words, the commonest after the pattern itself are A at 2,084, E at 2,080, S at 1,850, O at 1,686, I at 1,271, R at 1,187. The rarest are J, X, Q. 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 1,088 times, in E 683 times, in T 429 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 477, T with 350, B with 343, 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.