The 9 letter word list
The 9-letter edition uses two lists: 1,000 possible answers and 28,023 accepted guesses. Every answer is an accepted guess, but most accepted guesses are never an answer.
Which words can be an answer
Answers are everyday words: the nine-letter words used most often in film and television subtitles. Names, rude words and simple plurals are left out, along with most words that are only a shorter word with ED or ING added.
Answers are also limited to words spelled the same way in British and American English.
Which words are accepted as guesses
The guess list is much wider. It includes plurals, verb forms, both British and American spellings, and the less common words found in tournament word lists. They are useful for testing letters even though they will never be the answer.
The list in numbers
The most common letters across the answers are E (73%), I (61%), T (59%), R (58%), A (57%), N (54%). Answers most often start with S (10%), C (10%), P (10%) and end with E (29%), N (12%), T (11%).
Words such as CREMATION, COASTLINE, TENACIOUS, INSPECTOR are both answers and accepted guesses. A plural or a rarer word may be accepted as a guess without ever being an answer.
Where the words come from
Spellings are checked against open American and British dictionaries, with a public-domain tournament word list adding extra guesses. How common a word is comes from counts of words in film and television subtitles. The Copyright Notice names each source and its licence.
Why a real word can be rejected
- It does not have exactly nine letters.
- It is a name, an abbreviation or a word with a hyphen or apostrophe.
- It is a real word that the source dictionaries do not include. The list is finite.
- You already guessed it in that game.
Report a problem
If an answer seems unfair or a common word is missing, email [email protected] with the word and the board count. Please do not post answers to the current daily puzzle in public.