Do you want to improve your word game skills? Whether you actively play “Scrabble”, enjoy daily “Wordle”, or simply love the mental challenge of “unscrambling words from letters”, understanding common letter combinations is essential.
This guide explores 10 key letter combinations, backed by data analysis, and shows you how to use them strategically to your advantage.
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The Power of Letter Combinations: Bigrams & Trigrams
Before we examine the list, let’s quickly review bigrams (two-letter combinations) and trigrams (three-letter combinations). Analyzing the frequency of these combinations provides valuable insights into how we construct words.
- Rare Bigrams: Combinations like “xx,” “xk,” “qh,” “zf,” “wv,” “fv,” “gv,” “vh,” “rx,” and “vt” appear rarely, showing that these letter pairings are uncommon.
- Common Bigrams: In contrast, bigrams such as “es,” “in,” “er,” “ti,” “te,” “ng,” “at,” “is,” “re,” and “on” appear extremely frequently. They form the building blocks of many English words.
- Rare Trigrams: Tri-letter combinations like “pss,” “voh,” “vho,” “evh,” “vly,” “bze,” “szy,” “yks,” “bpu,” and “jje” have very low usage, indicating their unlikelihood to appear in standard words.
- Common Trigrams: Highly frequent trigrams, such as “ing,” “ati,” “ess,” “ion,” “ers,” “nes,” “ies,” “ter,” “tio,” and “ses,” appear in a wide variety of common words.
10 Common Letter Combinations to Master
Now, let’s examine 10 letter combinations that will serve as your secret weapons in word games:
- “ING”: This classic trigram appears in numerous words like “sing,” “running,” “bring,” “amazing,” and “everything,” giving you a constant source of potential word endings.
- “ER”: A versatile bigram commonly appears at the end of many nouns and verbs: “player,” “flower,” “after,” “better,” and “never.”
- “TI”: This bigram appears frequently, especially at the start of words, forming combinations for words like “action,” “nation,” “patient,” “mention,” and “portion.”
- “ES”: Another very common bigram often ends plurals and third-person singular verbs, such as “games,” “writes,” “loves,” and “dresses”.
- “RE”: Another frequent bigram often starts words, such as “return,” “repeat,” “remind,” and “refer.”
- “ION”: This trigram proves extremely valuable, often ending nouns, such as “action,” “nation,” “portion,” and “session.”
- “AT”: This highly versatile bigram appears in many short words and longer words with various combinations, such as “at”, “cat”, “that”, “after” and “situation”.
- “ST”: Another versatile bigram starts or ends words, such as “stay,” “best,” “last,” “street,” and “still.”
- “NT”: Another valuable bigram builds words such as “ant,” “tent,” “went,” “plant,” and “prevent.”
- “ED”: A go-to bigram creates past tense verbs, such as “played”, “walked”, “jumped”, “liked”, and “wanted”.
Understanding these common letter combinations enables more strategic word construction. Instead of just randomly guessing letters, actively look for words containing these combinations, which increases your odds of finding valid solutions. When you face jumbled letters, try to identify these common bigrams and trigrams first, forming the core of your words before you fill in less frequently used letters.
For example, if you see “E,” “S,” and “T,” consider “EST” or “TES.” If you see “I,” “N,” and “G,” look for words ending in “ING”.
By familiarizing yourself with these 10 common letter combinations and understanding their frequency, you can significantly improve your performance in various word games. They will become your secret weapon for unscrambling words and boosting your score. Remember, practice and pattern recognition are key.
How we provided data research
We maintain a comprehensive dictionary of English words that are valid in word games (you can explore the words list here). Using this resource, we conducted a statistical analysis to examine the popularity of bigrams and trigrams within the dataset.
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