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Seventeen words put E first and R third. Two second letters take more than half of them between them.
A leads the second box with five words and Y follows with four. Together that is over half the pattern from two letters, which is unusual for a group this small.
The A branch gives you EARLY, EARTH and EARNS. The Y branch is stranger, holding EYRAS, EYRIE and EYRIR, and most people would not reach for any of those first.
EARTH and EARLY are the two in ordinary use. ERROR and EGRET are the next ones worth a turn, and EERIE is the one that catches people because it doubles the E rather than the R.
S ends seven of the seventeen, which is forty one percent. Nothing else gets close.
That makes the last box the cheapest thing to test. Rule S out and you have cut the pattern by more than a third in a single move.
Only three words here repeat a letter, so a doubled letter is a weak assumption on this page even though EERIE and ERROR both make it look common.
Both are real words with different meanings. EERIE means strange or unsettling, EYRIE is a bird of prey's nest, and both sit on this pattern.
It is an ordinary everyday noun and most of this group is not. EARLY is the only other word here you would use without thinking about it.
You are into thin ground. Nine letters appear in that box in total, but everything past A and Y holds two words or fewer.