Word nerd deep dives.
Articles on word games, linguistics, and the math behind LexiLab's tools. Each piece is built around real data from the tools themselves – not guesswork.
The most common answers in crosswords are changing
ERIE is the third most common answer in American crosswords and the 33,389th most common word in English. We counted 8,006,563 answers from 46 publications to measure crosswordese properly – and found that ITER and STOA are vanishing, OREO has tripled, and the strangest words live in the shortest slots for a reason.
The words with the most anagrams in English
JAZZ has none. ALERTS has twelve. We ranked every letter set in the Collins CSW24 dictionary to find the words that pack in the most anagrams – and found a three-way tie at the top, the 80% of words that can't be rearranged at all, and the multi-word anagrams that feel almost designed.
Q without U: every valid Scrabble word with Q and no U
Draw a Q with no U in sight and most players panic. But there's a whole family of valid Q-without-U words – from QI to QAIMAQAMS – drawn from Arabic, Hebrew, and beyond. The complete NWL23 and CSW24 reference list, with point values and strategy tips.
The best Wordle starting word, according to information theory
What does "best" actually mean for a Wordle opener? We ran the numbers using entropy – the same math the LexiLab Wordle Solver uses – and the answer might surprise you.