Frequently Asked Questions
Find answers about word searches, five-letter patterns, matching letter pages, and the data behind WordMatchFinder.
How do I find a word with WordMatchFinder?
On the Word Finder page, enter known beginning or ending letters, letters that must appear, letters to exclude, and an optional word length. Submit the search to see matching words.
How do the Starts with and Ends with filters work?
Starts with matches the beginning of a word, and Ends with matches its final letters. Both filters can be combined with length, included-letter, and excluded-letter clues.
What does Contains mean in a search?
Every letter entered in Contains must appear in the result. The letters can appear in any position, and repeated letters in the filter require repeated occurrences in the word.
How does the Excludes filter work?
A result is removed if it contains any letter entered in Excludes. You can use this together with all other filters.
Which word lengths can I search?
The general Word Finder searches words from 2 through 15 letters. Choose Any length or select one length from the dropdown.
Can I sort matching words?
Yes. After a search, choose A to Z or Z to A. The result count reflects all matches, even when only a limited result grid is displayed.
How do I use the five-letter word finder?
Open the five-letter finder and enter any known letters in positions 1 through 5. Add included or excluded letters to narrow the live results.
What are the first- and third-letter pages?
Each page fixes a starting letter and the third letter of a five-letter word. Its list, count, examples, and letter-pattern information are calculated from the word database.
How many first-and-third-letter combinations have pages?
There are 162 curated first-and-third-letter combinations, each with a dedicated page linked from the five-letter sidebar.
What does the Second and Third Letter sidebar list include?
It links to each of the 414 second/third letter pairs that occur in the five-letter word list, so every linked page has matching words.
Do the letter pages show the full matching word list?
Yes. The starting-letter, ending-letter, and first-and-third-letter pages render their matching words from the same validated five-letter list.
How are the statistics on letter pages calculated?
Letter frequencies, pair patterns, repeated-letter totals, and examples are derived from the words shown for that page. No search-volume estimates are used.
Which dictionary does WordMatchFinder use?
The five-letter list combines the CC0 English game-word list from the Words repository with filtered public-domain entries from Moby Words II. Both sources are normalized to lowercase ASCII five-letter words, and the source details are documented with the dataset.
How do I clear a general word search?
Choose Reset to clear every general search filter, remove the result list, and return to the empty search state.