Enter criteria and click Find Words
Twenty one words put R first and V third, and E fills the fourth box in almost every one. That is the tightest constraint on the page.
I takes the second box in seven words, A in six, and E and O in four each. Only vowels appear there, and no branch runs away with it.
RIVER, RIVET and RIVAL come from the I branch. RAVEN, RAVEL and RAVES come from A. REVEL and REVUE from E, ROVER and ROVES from O.
That even spread means the second box is the right place to spend a guess, because whichever letter you test eliminates roughly a quarter of the page.
E takes the fourth box in seventeen of the twenty one, eighty one percent. I, U and A share the remainder. Assume the E rather than testing it, and put the guess somewhere that actually divides the list.
Endings scatter here in a way the rest of the page does not. L and N close four words each, D, R and S take three apiece, and seven different letters appear in total.
So a miss in the last box rules out very little. Work the second box first and accept that the ending will probably be the last thing you learn.
It is the most common word here and it tests the largest branch. RAVEN is the natural follow up because it moves you to a different vowel.
Only in the last box, and RIVES and RIVEN sit on the same stem. The RIV group is the most crowded on the page.
None at all across the twenty one words, so a visible repeat rules this pattern out in a single step.