Enter criteria and click Find Words
Twenty eight words put A first and L third, and ten of them repeat a letter. That is a much higher share than most patterns carry.
L takes the second box in eight words, twenty nine percent of the pattern. ALLOY, ALLOW, ALLEY and ALLAY all come from it, and every one of them doubles the L before reaching a vowel.
E and O take twenty of the twenty eight between them, which is over two thirds. Only five letters appear in that box at all.
So the fourth box is the one to assume rather than test. Put your guesses into the second and fifth boxes, where the spread is much wider.
ATLAS, AXLES and ABLER step outside the doubled L entirely, and each uses a different second letter. AALII is the odd one that doubles the A instead, and it is the only word here that does.
S ends eight of these, twenty nine percent. Y, T, W and D follow well behind.
Eleven different letters close these words, so the last box stays open longer than either of the others. It is usually the last thing to fall.
They differ only in the last box and so do ALLOW and ALLOD. The doubled L branch is full of near pairs, which is what makes it narrow slowly.
Yes, it is a shrub and it appears in word game dictionaries. It is the only word on this pattern that doubles the A.
ALLOY tests the doubled L and the common S neighbours at once. If it comes back empty, ATLAS moves you outside that branch in one step.