Guides

Guides — how the words behave, measured on the list this site ships

Four short guides, and every number in them is computed from the same 172,820-word ENABLE1 list the solvers search — never quoted from somewhere else, so each figure can be checked against the file this site serves. Where a guide names a technique, the solver that runs it is one link away.

• Starting words, measured — the ten five-letter openers a frequency count of this list actually ranks first, with the method printed beside the result.
• How word scores work — the standard letter values, why Q and Z carry ten, and the 29 words in the list that use a Q with no U.
• Unscrambling by hand — the techniques the solvers automate: sorted racks, affix stripping, and the two-word split.
• What makes a pangram — the sentence kind and the seven-letter-puzzle kind, and how many candidates this dictionary actually holds.

The guides describe the shipped list. They will disagree with other dictionaries in exactly the places the methodology page says lists disagree.