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Forty two words put A first and R third. The letter caught between them is where the guessing actually happens, because no single one runs away with it.
U takes the second box twenty one percent of the time, R fourteen percent, and B and I twelve percent apiece. That is fourteen different letters sharing one slot, so testing a single vowel there and moving on will not get you far.
AGREE and APRON test different second letters and use common letters elsewhere. ACRES covers the S ending that eleven of these words take, and AORTA is the one that looks like it should not qualify.
Eight of these repeat a letter somewhere, which is high for five letters. ARRAY, ARROW and ARRAS all double the R straight after the A, so if a repeat looks likely that branch is worth trying before anything else.
No. ARRAY and ARROW do, but AGREE and APRON put something else in the second box. The pattern only fixes the first and third letters.
No. It runs A, O, R, T, A, so the R breaks the vowel run. That is exactly why it lands on this pattern.
R first, since it covers six words and leads into the doubled R shapes. B and C come next and both thin out quickly.