Find Five-Letter Words from the Clues You Know
Use this finder when you know part of a five-letter spelling but cannot complete it. Place confirmed letters in their exact positions, add letters that must occur somewhere, and exclude letters that cannot occur at all. The search combines those three conditions, so a result must satisfy every filter you enter.
This is a general dictionary search, not a connection to today's official Wordle answer. It is useful for a fixed-length crossword pattern or a vocabulary exercise too. For Wordle feedback involving yellow positions or repeated-letter limits, the colored-board Solver can express more detail than these three fields.
Use the Three Filters for Different Kinds of Evidence
Pattern tiles: confirmed positions
The five large tiles represent positions one through five. Enter a letter only when its location is known. To search _A__E, put A in tile two and E in tile five; leave the others empty. Underscores here describe blank positions—you do not need to type underscores or question marks into the tiles.
A filled tile is a fixed position, not a rack letter. Putting A in tile two means the answer's second letter must be A. If you only know that A occurs somewhere, use Must include instead.
Must include: presence anywhere
Enter required letters together, such as AR. Both must appear, but they do not have to be adjacent or appear in the order typed. A letter fixed in the pattern can also satisfy this field; including it again does not require an extra copy.
This field checks presence, not quantity. A and AA have the same effect. Writing AA does not require two As. If two exact positions are confirmed as A, put A in both corresponding tiles. Otherwise, use the colored-board Solver when your feedback proves a minimum or maximum count.
Exclude letters: absence everywhere
Every letter in this field is banned from the whole word. Enter ST to remove every candidate containing S or T. An exclusion also overrides an inclusion or fixed position: requiring C while excluding C produces no matches.
Be careful with duplicate guesses. A gray A alongside a green A does not mean that A is absent everywhere. Do not put A in Exclude letters in that situation; this simple finder has no field for “exactly one A.”
A Worked Search: _A__E, Required R, Excluded ST
Set A in position two and E in position five. Add R to Must include and ST to Exclude letters. Now compare several familiar candidates against those conditions rather than treating every plausible spelling as a match.
- RANGE fits: its second letter is A, its fifth is E, it contains R, and it has neither S nor T.
- BARGE and CARVE fit for the same reasons, although R occupies a different position from RANGE.
- RAISE fails: its S conflicts with the exclusion, even though its positions and required R fit.
- CARTE fails: T is excluded.
- CRANE fails: its A is third, not second.
These examples are checks of the filters, not a claim that only three words remain. The broad dictionary also contains less familiar entries. Read the actual counter for the full match total, and check your game's accepted vocabulary before playing a candidate.
Why a Yellow Letter Can Still Appear in the Wrong Place
A yellow clue contains two facts: the letter exists, and one specific position is forbidden. Must include expresses only the first fact. It does not remember where you previously guessed that letter.
For example, yellow A in position three means that CRANE should be excluded by a full feedback search. Entering A in this finder's Must include field alone can still return CRANE because it contains A. Do not turn that yellow A into a fixed tile; that would require the very position you need to rule out.
Use the Wordle Solver to copy complete colored rows and enforce forbidden positions and duplicate-letter counts together. Use this Finder when your known positions and whole-word inclusion or exclusion clues are sufficient.
Read the Results and Controls Correctly
The list updates when you type into a pattern tile or either text field. Find matching words reruns those same filters; it does not unlock a different search mode. The text fields ignore non-letter characters and case, so spaces and commas do not create phrases or additional matching rules.
The counter includes every match. The panel displays the first 100, in alphabetical order when the full dictionary loads. You can scroll through those displayed words, but there is no next-page button for later matches. Add another reliable clue to make a large set easier to inspect.
Alphabetical position is not a recommendation. The Finder does not rank likely daily answers, calculate points, or choose an optimal next guess. Rare entries can appear before familiar words simply because of their spelling.
Clear filters empties the five tiles and both text fields, resets the challenge message, and runs an unrestricted search. The results do not disappear: without constraints, the counter returns to the available five-letter dictionary total.
Use the Quick Pattern Challenge as Practice
New challenge selects a random word from the available dictionary, clears your previous filters, and fills that word's first and last letters. The middle three tiles stay blank. You can add more constraints to explore spellings with those boundaries.
This is a pattern exercise, not a separate guessing game. It does not check a submitted answer, track attempts, or reveal a saved target after a win. Several dictionary words can share the two displayed letters; finding another matching word is still useful practice. The initial random word can also be unfamiliar because the selection uses the broad dictionary.
Fix an Empty or Unexpected Search
If there are no matches, check for a required letter that is also excluded, a mistyped fixed position, or an exclusion based on an extra gray copy. Remove the least certain filter first and see which change restores candidates. Do not add speculative letters just to reduce the count.
If results seem too broad, check whether you expected Must include to enforce adjacency, duplicate counts, or a yellow letter's forbidden position. It enforces none of those conditions. A more detailed colored-board search may fit your evidence better.
If the status mentions a preview dictionary, the full list did not load and the page is using a smaller built-in set. Reload and check the status before relying on the count. JavaScript is required for the pattern inputs and filtering.
Note on Word Lists
This independent Finder uses a broad spelling reference, not an official Wordle answer list. Matching entries are not guaranteed to be accepted in any particular game. Filter examples and current code were checked on 21 October 2026; this is a verification date, not a dictionary update date. This site is not affiliated with The New York Times.