Words Containing...
When you know a letter or pattern appears somewhere in a word — but not where — the contains search is your most powerful filter. In Wordle, every yellow tile is a contains clue: the letter is in the answer, just not in the position you guessed. In crosswords, a confirmed middle letter narrows thousands of candidates to dozens. In Scrabble, building a new word through tiles already on the board is a contains constraint by definition. Browse any letter or combination below to find every matching word in our dictionary.
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Two-letter combinations that appear in at least sixteen words (counted once per word). For three-letter patterns or position-specific filters, use the Word Finder.
High-Value Combinations for Word Games
QU — The most strategically important letter combination in Scrabble. Because Q almost always requires a U alongside it, the QU pair behaves like a single unit in rack management. Knowing the full list of words containing QU — from common words like QUEEN and QUOTE to rarer plays like QUAFF, QOPH and TRANQUIL — is essential for any competitive Scrabble player. There are also a small number of valid Q-without-U words worth memorising for emergencies.
ZZ — The double Z combination produces some of the highest-scoring short words in any word game. JAZZ scores 29 points in Scrabble before any bonus squares, FIZZ scores 28 and BUZZ scores 26. The ZZ list is short enough to memorise entirely and valuable enough that doing so pays dividends in almost every game where a Z tile appears.
TH — The most common consonant digraph in English, appearing in thousands of everyday words. THE, THAT, THIS, THERE and THEN are the most frequent, but TH appears in the middle and at the end of words just as often as at the start. For Wordle players, knowing the TH combination can appear in any of the five positions dramatically speeds up elimination.
PH — A digraph from Greek that represents the F sound in English. Words containing PH tend to come from scientific and academic vocabulary — PHONE, PHOTO, PHRASE, PHYSICS, SPHERE and TROPHY. In Scrabble the P and H together score 5 points for just two tiles, while often enabling access to longer, higher-scoring words.
CK — Signals a hard K sound following a short vowel and appears in hundreds of short, common words. BACK, LOCK, DUCK, KICK, NECK and ROCK all follow this pattern. The CK combination is particularly useful in Scrabble for short plays on crowded boards where longer words cannot fit.
GH — One of the most distinctive features of English spelling, GH is silent in many words (NIGHT, THOUGH, DAUGHTER) but pronounced in others (GHOST, GHOUL). For word game players the GH words are worth browsing specifically because opponents rarely consider them, making them strong surprise plays.
NG — Appears at the end of thousands of -ING words but also occurs in the middle of common words like FINGER, SINGLE, HUNGRY and LONGER. In Scrabble the N and G together score 3 points as a pair and the NG ending is one of the most reliable back hooks on the board.
OO — A double vowel combination that produces a distinctive sound and a useful word set for Scrabble. BOOK, COOL, FOOD, GOOD, MOON, POOL and ROOM are all common plays, while rarer OO words like VOODOO, HOOPOO and WAHOO offer strong point totals with memorable patterns.
How Contains Searches Work in Word Games
In Wordle, the contains constraint is the information you get from a yellow tile — the letter exists somewhere in the five-letter answer, just not in the position you placed it. A player who immediately looks up every 5-letter word containing that letter, then mentally filters against their grey tiles and green tile positions, is solving the puzzle systematically rather than by intuition. Two yellow tiles together reduce the candidate pool dramatically. Use the contains lists above as your starting point, then apply the Wordle Solver for multi-constraint filtering.
In crossword puzzles, the contains constraint typically comes from a crossing answer — you have confirmed one or two letters from other clues and need to find words that include them at specific positions. While position-specific filtering requires the full Word Finder tool, starting with the contains list for your confirmed letters is the fastest way to generate a candidate set before applying further constraints.
In Scrabble and Words With Friends, building through existing tiles on the board is one of the most advanced and highest-scoring techniques. When a specific letter or sequence is already placed and you want to form a new word that passes through it, you are solving a contains problem. The contains lists here give you the full universe of valid words to search through. For position-specific filtering — where you know the letter falls in position 3 of a 7-letter word, for example — use the Word Finder with the contains field to get exact matches.