A five-letter word containing given letters is any valid five-letter entry that includes every letter you name, in any position unless you fix one. Word games create this search: you hold two or three known letters from a Wordle row or a Scrabble rack and need the words that still fit.
Type “five-letter words containing” and “5 letter words containing” into a search box and you get the same thing back: a finder that takes the letters you already have and returns the words built around them. This guide covers what “containing” matches, how to run the search, and how to feed it the yellow letters from a Wordle grid.
What “5 letter words containing” actually means
A containing search keeps every word that holds the letters you enter and drops the rest. The letters can sit anywhere unless you pin one to a slot, and you can pair the request with a list of letters the word must not have. That second half matters most in Wordle, where every gray tile is a letter to exclude.
The order you type the letters does not matter to a plain containing search. “Contains A and E” returns AISLE, BLADE, and QUEEN alike, because each holds both letters somewhere. What changes the result is whether you are asking for the letters scattered or together.
Containing a letter anywhere vs. containing an exact sequence
Most word finders offer two different “contains” behaviors, and mixing them up is the usual reason a search returns nothing. Contains these letters means each letter appears somewhere, in any order: enter A, R, and E and you match SPARE, LEARN, and OPERA. Contains this sequence means those letters appear consecutively, in that order.
On this site the Contains filter works the second way: enter AR and you get SCARF and SNARL, where the AR sits together. If you want A and R anywhere in the word, search them as two separate required letters instead.
Why word games create this search
Wordle, Scrabble, and Words With Friends all leave you holding a few confirmed letters and no clear word. In Wordle a yellow tile is a letter the answer contains but that you placed in the wrong spot; after two guesses you often have two or three of them. In Scrabble the letters come from your rack and the tiles already on the board. Either way the useful question is the same: which five-letter words contain this set?
How to find 5 letter words containing specific letters
The steps are the same in any decent finder, including the one on this site.
Enter the letters the word must include
Put your confirmed letters in the “contains” or “must include” field. These are position-free: the finder returns every word that holds them somewhere. Start with the letters you are surest about, because each extra required letter shrinks the list sharply. Two common letters such as A and S still leave hundreds of options; three usually leave a readable handful.
Add the letters to rule out
List the letters the word cannot have in the “exclude” field. In Wordle these are your gray tiles, with one exception: if a letter shows up gray in one spot but green or yellow in another, it is not excluded, it is a repeated letter that appears a limited number of times. Leave those out of the exclude field.
Lock a letter to a position when you know it
A plain containing search treats every letter as floating. Once you have a green tile, you know an exact slot, and a containing search alone will not use that. Switch to the full Wordle solver and rebuild the colored row: green letters lock to their positions, yellow letters are required but barred from the slot you tried, and gray letters drop out. That turns a loose containing list into a short ranked set of next guesses.
A yellow tile says two things at once: the answer contains this letter, and it is not in the position you just tried. A basic containing search uses only the first half.
Turning Wordle clues into a containing search
Yellow means contained, just not there
If you only have a word list to work with, enter every yellow and green letter as a required letter, then mentally cross off any word that repeats your exact yellow placement. The position-aware solver does that step for you.
Handling repeated letters in the query
Five-letter words repeat a letter more often than players expect: about 32% of the common five-letter list on this site has at least one doubled letter, words like ABBEY, PRESS, and LLAMA. If Wordle shows a letter green or yellow twice, require it twice in the finder. If it shows one green and one gray copy, the answer has exactly one of that letter, so require it once and do not exclude it. The double-letter rules guide covers the mixed green-yellow-gray cases in full.
How many five-letter words contain each letter
Some containing searches return a wall of words and some return almost nothing, and the difference is letter frequency. The counts below come from the WordleSolver five-letter list of 3,424 common English words, so they show realistic list sizes rather than a whole-dictionary total.
| You require… | Words that contain it | Sample |
|---|---|---|
| S | 1,736 | SLATE, BRASS, ASIDE |
| E | 1,658 | STEER, OCEAN, ANGLE |
| A | 1,280 | GRACE, LLAMA, PLAZA |
| R | 1,079 | RIVER, CRANE, SPURT |
| O | 935 | ROBOT, MOUTH, CLOTH |
| L | 918 | LEMON, SKULL, PLAID |
| T | 905 | TRUST, LATTE, NIGHT |
| N | 742 | NURSE, PIANO, GLAND |
| U | 600 | UNCLE, TRUCK, QUEUE |
| Y | 387 | YEARN, DAISY, JELLY |
| Sequence ER | 211 | ALTER, HERON, OTHER |
| Sequence IN | 176 | DINER, BLIND, RUING |
| Sequence AR | 168 | SCARF, SNARL, LARGE |
| Sequence ST | 153 | STOMP, HASTE, BURST |
| Sequence LE | 141 | LEDGE, ABLES, PALER |
| Sequence OO | 102 | BROOM, IGLOO, SPOOK |
| Sequence LL | 91 | SHELL, DOLLY, TRILL |
Require two of these letters at once and the list drops fast. Words containing both A and R number in the low hundreds; add E and you are down to a set you can scan, the SPARE / LEARN / OPERA family. For the prebuilt pages, see five-letter words containing A, E, O, or S.
5 letter words containing two or three letters
The number of letters you feed the finder decides whether you still need it.
Common letter pairs and sequences
If you know two letters but not their order, search them as two required letters, not as a sequence. AR, ER, IN, ST, and LE are the pairs most worth checking because they appear in hundreds of five-letter words and they often sit at either end. When Wordle gives you two yellows, this is the search: both letters required, both original positions mentally excluded, gray letters excluded.
When three known letters is enough to finish
Three confirmed letters usually cut a 3,000-word list to a dozen or fewer. Containing A, R, and E leaves a short list; add a single position or one excluded letter and you are often looking at one or two answers. At that point a plain list is faster than a finder. If you want to browse by pattern first, the five-letter words finder and the word finder both take a letter set and return matches.
Sources and further reading
- Five-letter words finder for the starts-with, contains, and ends-with filters used above.
- Best Wordle starting words for which letters are worth testing first.
- Editorial policy for how we check and update these guides.