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B first and I third covers 76 words, and nearly forty percent of them take R in the box between.
R leads at about thirty eight percent and L follows at twenty one. Between them those two consonants carry most of the group.
A and E take smaller shares, and they are where the entries that break the blend shape tend to sit.
Both put U in the second box and differ only in the final letter. Landing either one resolves the other on the spot, which is rare in a group this size.
They also sit outside the BR and BL blends entirely, so testing one of them covers ground the common branches never reach.
BEING is the entry most people overlook, since the vowel pairing reads as one sound and hides where the I actually sits.
It is also common enough to be a realistic answer, which makes forgetting it more costly here than in most groups.
BRIDE, marginally. The D and E in the last two boxes are more common than C and K, so a partial hit leaves you more to work with.
No, but it does repeat the shape of BLINK almost exactly. Those two differ only in the last box, which makes them another useful pair.
The U after B is uncommon in this group, and the UI pairing that follows is rarer still. They form their own small family rather than joining a blend.