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A first and H third covers 32 words, and two openings carry nearly half of them.
S takes about twenty five percent of the box between and C twenty two, which gives you ASH and ACH as the two shapes that matter.
ASHES, ASHEN and ASHER sit on one, ACHES and ACHED on the other, and the two behave the same way once you are inside them.
The pairs differ only in the last box, so a single hit usually closes out the branch.
APHID and APHIS are the other pair worth knowing, and they differ in one box as well.
ABHOR is the outlier here, since B takes only three percent of the box and nothing else on that branch is a word you would guess.
It is the guess to keep for the point where both of the big families have failed.
No. ALPHA puts L in the second box and P in the third. The H lands fourth.
They differ only in the second box, so the two big branches are separated by a single letter. Guessing one effectively tests both.
It is in the list as a spelling for a sneeze, though it is the kind of word to try only after the ordinary shapes have failed.