Some word questions are not about racks or patterns but about rules: which words contain a Q but never a U? Which five-letter words hold two E’s? This free Words With Letters finder answers them directly — set the letters a word must include, the letters it must avoid, and optional length, start and end rules, and it scans all 359,039 words in our list for matches.
How Words With Letters works
Each rule is applied to every word in the list. Must include is a multiset: type ee and a word needs at least two e’s to qualify; type q and one q anywhere is enough. Must exclude is absolute: if any excluded letter appears even once, the word is out. Length, starts with and ends with then trim what survives. Results are grouped by length and ordered alphabetically inside each group, because this tool is for exploring a set of words, not for picking a game move — there are no scores, just the complete set of words that obey your rules. If a combination matches nothing, the tool says so plainly rather than relaxing your rules behind your back.
A worked example: the Q-without-U family
Set must include to q and must exclude to u, and the finder returns 106 words — the famous family of English words where Q travels without its usual partner. It includes everyday Scrabble weapons like qat, curiosities like faqir and fiqh, and the plural-heavy borrowings (qindar, qiana) that make the set so useful in tile games. Now change the rules to must include ee with length set to 5 and the answer becomes 1,025 words, from ackee and aedes to aerie — a neat demonstration of how one repeated-letter rule reshapes the language.
Extreme rules, honest answers
Push the rules harder: include z and exclude all five vowels (aeiou), and only 11 words in the entire list survive, among them syzygy — the classic vowel-starved curiosity — alongside terse abbreviations. That is the pleasure of this tool: it does not sample or suggest, it exhausts. Whatever rules you set, you get every word that satisfies them, counted exactly, so a small answer is as trustworthy as a large one.
Where these rules come up
Wordle is the everyday case: letters confirmed present go in must include, grey letters go in must exclude, length is 5, and the result is your true candidate pool. Hangman and crossword variants produce the same shape of question with different letters. Writers use it for lipograms and constrained pieces — a paragraph avoiding E starts by knowing which words avoid E. Teachers use it to build spelling lists around a letter pattern, and tile-game players use it to memorise the odd families (Q without U, words with no vowels, words ending in J) that win games precisely because nobody else knows them.
Limitations worth knowing
The rules are about which letters a word contains, not where they sit — for fixed positions, use the Crossword Solver. Include rules count letters, so ee demands two e’s but says nothing about their order or spacing. The underlying list is a broad English list, so a few entries are abbreviations or technical terms rather than everyday vocabulary, and very loose rules (a single common included letter) can match tens of thousands of words; the page shows the first 2,000 grouped by length and tells you the true total, so add a rule rather than scrolling forever.
Words With Letters – frequently asked questions
What does typing a letter twice in “must include” do?
It requires that letter at least twice. ee matches only words with two or more e’s; sss would require three s’s. Single letters require just one occurrence.
How is this different from the Word Finder?
The Word Finder starts from a rack: a word must be buildable from your tiles, each tile used at most once. This tool applies rules to whole words — a word may use a letter five times even if you typed it once, as long as the include and exclude rules hold.
Can I use it for Wordle?
Yes. Put every letter you have confirmed in must include, every grey letter in must exclude, set the length to 5, and the results are exactly the answers still possible — then use known positions in the Crossword Solver to pin the order down.
Why does a word with my excluded letter still… no, it can’t?
It can’t. Exclusion is absolute and is checked letter by letter; if a word appears, it contains none of your excluded letters. If a result surprises you, check for a rule left over in the starts-with or ends-with boxes.
More word tools and lists
Browse the full collection on our Word Finder & Word Tools hub. Natural next steps: the Word Unscrambler for rack solving, the Crossword Solver when letter positions matter, and the Word Finder for rack searches with filters.
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