MYWORDIQ

Letter Frequency and Word-Guessing Strategy

Letter frequency is a useful guide and a poor oracle. Here is what it can and cannot tell you.

Last updated October 6, 2026

What “most common” means

There are two different counts, and they give different rankings:

  • Frequency in running text counts letters in books and articles. Short, constantly repeated words such as the, and and that push T and H up. The order usually quoted is E, T, A, O, I, N, S, H, R — the “ETAOIN SHRDLU” sequence familiar from old typesetting machines. E accounts for roughly one letter in eight.
  • Frequency across a word list counts each dictionary word once. Here E still leads, but A, R, I, O, T, N and S follow in a different order and H drops well down, because the only counts once.

Word puzzles draw answers from a word list, so the second count is usually the more relevant one. Exact rankings vary with the list used, which is why different sources disagree slightly.

Position matters as much as frequency

  • First letters: S, C, P, B, T and A start a large share of English words. E is common overall but comparatively uncommon as a first letter.
  • Last letters: E, S, D, T, Y, N and R are frequent endings. Very few common words end in J, Q or V.
  • Pairs: Q is almost always followed by U. TH, HE, IN, ER and AN are among the most frequent two-letter sequences in text.

How to use this when guessing

Vowel coverage

Nearly every English word contains at least one of A, E, I, O, U or Y. Learning early which vowels are present tells you the rough skeleton of the word.

Consonant coverage

R, S, T, L and N are the workhorses. A guess that tests several of them at once tends to be more informative than one built on rarer letters.

Elimination

A letter you have ruled out is as valuable as one you have confirmed. Avoid reusing ruled-out letters when you are still exploring, unless you need them to form a real word.

Clue first, statistics second

In a clue-based game such as MyWordIQ or ClueLoop, meaning narrows the field far more than frequency does. Use frequency to break ties and to decide what a missing letter probably is — not to pick an answer the clue does not support.

What frequency cannot do

No starting word or letter set is “the best” in every game. What is optimal depends on the exact list of possible answers, the feedback the game gives, and whether you are trying to minimize average guesses or avoid the worst case. Claims of a single scientifically best opener apply, at most, to one specific game and word list.

Frequency describes the language as a whole. A particular answer is under no obligation to be typical: JAZZ and LYNX are real words too.

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