Letter frequency in Streakle's answer pool, position by position
English letter frequency tables are built from prose. Five-letter puzzle answers do not behave like prose. Here is the real distribution.
How we got these numbers
We counted every letter in all 601 unique words in Streakle's live answer pool, both overall and separately for each of the five positions, and recorded how many distinct words contain each letter at least once. Source data is src/lib/words.ts as shipped on 3 August 2026.
Why the standard frequency table misleads you
Everyone knows ETAOIN SHRDLU, the classic ordering of English letters by frequency. It is a fact about running prose: articles, prepositions and inflections. Puzzle answer pools are curated lists of concrete five-letter nouns and verbs, and they behave differently.
The practical consequence is that people over-weight vowels and under-weight the letters that actually split a five-letter pool. So we counted.
How often each letter appears in a word at all
E is in nearly half of all answers. R, A, T and O are each in about a third. That top five, E R A T O, is an anagram of ORATE, which is exactly why the strongest openers in our simulation are all rearrangements of those letters plus I.
At the other end: Z appears in 3.3 percent of answers, J in 3.2, Q in 3.2 and X in 3.2. Guessing a word to test one of those is almost always a wasted turn, unless you are down to two candidates that differ by it.
| Letter | Share of answers |
|---|---|
| E | 46.6% |
| R | 35.6% |
| A | 34.1% |
| T | 33.6% |
| O | 31.1% |
| I | 28.8% |
| L | 27.6% |
| S | 25.1% |
| N | 22.6% |
| U | 22.6% |
| H | 20.6% |
| C | 17.1% |
| Y | 16.1% |
| D | 14.6% |
| P | 14.1% |
This is the number that matters for guessing, not raw letter counts. A letter that appears twice in one word only tells you about one word.
Position matters more than people think
The shape here is clean and useful. Position one is consonant territory and S owns it outright at 14.1 percent. Positions two and three are the vowel slots: O, A, I and U dominate both. Position five is E, and then a surprisingly strong Y at 12.6 percent.
This is why yellow tiles are worth more than they feel. If you have a yellow A, it is far more likely to belong in slot two or three than in slot one or five, and moving it there is usually a better use of a guess than adding a fresh consonant.
| Position | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Most common | S 14.1% | O 14.8% | A 13.8% | E 12.6% | E 21.6% |
| 2nd | T 7.2% | R 13.3% | I 12.3% | N 8.5% | Y 12.6% |
| 3rd | W 6.8% | A 10.6% | O 11.1% | T 8.5% | T 11.5% |
| 4th | F 6.3% | U 9.2% | U 9.5% | C 8.2% | L 7.8% |
| 5th | P 5.5% | I 8.2% | E 7.7% | L 7.8% | H 7.8% |
More than one Streakle answer in five ends in E. No other single letter-and-position fact in the pool is close.
The vowel myth
Nearly 90 percent of Streakle answers have exactly one or two vowels. That is a very tight distribution, and it is the reason vowel-hunting openers like AUDIO and ADIEU perform so badly. You are spending four or five slots to resolve a question whose answer is almost always the same.
Practically: after one good opener you usually know the vowels. What you do not know is the consonant frame. Spend guess two there.
| Vowels in the word | Share of answers |
|---|---|
| 0 | 1.2% |
| 1 | 32.3% |
| 2 | 57.6% |
| 3 or more | 9.0% |
Repeated letters are the real difficulty lever
25.5 percent of Streakle answers contain a repeated letter. That is high, and it is the single biggest reason a puzzle feels stuck.
It is also deliberate. Streakle scores every word for difficulty before building the daily run, and a repeated letter costs 2.4 points, more than any single rare letter except X, J, Q and Z. Words with repeats therefore sort into the harder bands and surface at higher levels, exactly where the guess budget has already dropped to three.
The tell is a guess that comes back with four greys and one green and no obvious next move. In the higher levels, test a double before you test another new consonant.
- The 12 hardest words in the pool by the game's own score: JAZZY, FUZZY, BUZZY, FIZZY, DIZZY, JIFFY, BOBBY, YUMMY, FLUFF, ZIPPY, PUPPY, KAYAK.
- Every one has a repeated letter. Eight of the twelve also carry a rare letter.
- The easiest words by the same score: IRATE, RAISE, LATER, RATIO, STORE, TRAIN, LEARN, NOISE. Two vowels, no repeats, common consonants.
How to use this at the board
- Open with a word covering E, R, A, T and I. IRATE does all five and can be the answer.
- If your opener returns a yellow vowel, try slot two or three before anywhere else.
- If you need a fifth-letter guess, E then Y then T covers 45.7 percent of the pool.
- Do not spend a guess on Z, J, Q or X unless it is the deciding letter between two live candidates. Each appears in about 3 percent of answers.
- From level five upward, assume a repeat is more likely than a rare letter. The difficulty ramp puts them there on purpose.
Frequently asked questions
Does this apply to Consultle, Parentle, Sportle and Leafsle?
No. Each of those games has its own themed word list with a different distribution, which is exactly the point of this article: frequency tables are a property of the list, not of English. We plan to publish the same breakdown for each of them.
Why count words containing a letter rather than total letter occurrences?
Because a guess tells you whether a letter is in the word, not how many times. A letter appearing twice in one answer still only eliminates or confirms one answer, so word-level share is the number that maps to guessing decisions.
Will these numbers change?
They will shift slightly whenever we add words to the pool. The figures here were computed on 3 August 2026 against a pool of 601 unique words, and we will rerun and date any update.