Word Pattern Finder
Type a pattern — ? for one letter, * for any run of letters — or fill in the starts-with, ends-with, contains, and length filters, and get every matching word, most common first. Built for crossword clues, word games, and the word you can only half spell. Free, no sign-up.
? stands for exactly one letter and * for any number of letters: c?t finds cat and cut; *ology finds words ending in -ology.
Enter a pattern such as t??k or *ology, or fill in any of the filters, to list the words that match.
Word data from the Datamuse API
How to Use the Word Pattern Finder
- Type a pattern, or skip it. Write the letters you know with
?for each unknown letter, or*for an unknown stretch. A crossword answer of five letters with R second and SS at the end is?r?ss. - Add filters. Starts with, ends with, contains, and an exact length all work on their own or together with a pattern.
- Choose the order. Most common first suits crosswords; alphabetical and shortest first help when you are scanning a long list.
- Copy the list. Copy all puts every match on the clipboard, one word per line.
Pattern Symbols
| You type | It means | Example | Finds |
|---|---|---|---|
? | Exactly one letter | t??k | took, talk, task, tank, tick |
* | Any number of letters, including none | *ology | technology, psychology, theology, ideology |
| letters | Those letters, in that position | s?a?? | state, small, space, stage, start |
Patterns ignore capitals and spaces. Hyphenated words and phrases are left out, because ? and * stand for letters only.
Worked Examples
- A crossword answer.
?r?ssreturns press, cross, dress, grass, gross, brass, truss, crass first. Pair the list with the clue — or describe the clue in the Reverse Dictionary. - A word-game guess. Contains q, length 5, returns 278 words starting quite, equal, quiet, quick, queen, quest, query, quote.
- A family of terms. Ends with ology, length 7, gives biology, ecology, geology, apology, zoology before rarer forms such as urology and otology.
- Both ends known. Starts with ab, ends with ing, length 7, gives exactly five: abiding, abusing, abating, abasing, aboding.
How the Results Are Chosen
The words come from the Datamuse API's English vocabulary, ordered by how often they appear in Google Books. Datamuse returns at most 1,000 matches for one pattern, so a broad pattern such as *ology can be cut short — the finder tells you when that happens. When you give both a length and a "contains" string, it avoids the limit by asking one precise question per position — q????, ?q???, ??q??, ???q?, ????q for five-letter words with q — so that list is complete.
Datamuse's vocabulary also holds acronyms written in lower case and thousands of surnames. The finder hides those by default: a word with no vowel or y is treated as an abbreviation, which also hides a few real words such as nth and cwm, and a word Datamuse knows only as a proper noun is treated as a name. Tick Include abbreviations and names to see everything. The counts in the examples above are with that box unticked, as Datamuse answered when this page was written.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I find five-letter words with certain letters?
- Set Length to 5 and type the letter in Contains. If you know where a letter goes, use a pattern instead —
??a?efor A third and E last. For several known letters in unknown places, run the most unusual letter through Contains and scan the list for the rest. - What do ? and * mean?
- A question mark stands for exactly one letter and an asterisk for any number of letters, including none.
c?tfinds three-letter words such as cat and cut;c*talso finds longer words such as cart and concert. - Can I use it to solve crossword clues?
- It solves the letter half of a clue. Enter the answer's length and every letter you have from crossing answers, then read down the list for one that fits the clue. If the list is long, put the clue's meaning into the Reverse Dictionary with the first letter as a hint.
- Are the results valid Scrabble words?
- Not necessarily. Datamuse's vocabulary is a general English one, built from books and dictionaries, not an official tournament word list. The Anagram Solver checks words against ENABLE, a public-domain word-game list, so use it when validity matters.
- Why do I get fewer results than I expected?
- Either the pattern is narrow — every fixed letter and the length must match exactly — or a broad pattern reached Datamuse's limit of 1,000 matches, which the finder notes under the results. Adding a length or a known letter usually brings back the missing words.
- Is my search sent anywhere?
- Your pattern goes to CitationEasy's server, which asks the Datamuse API at api.datamuse.com — up to fifteen requests when a length and a "contains" string are split into positions — so Datamuse sees the pattern but not your IP address. CitationEasy keeps no record of who searched for what; answers are cached by pattern for up to a week, so a repeat search does not ask Datamuse again. Datamuse says it keeps a temporary log of queries and discards it at the end of the day.