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Just three words hold S second and L third, and all of them come from the same four letter word.
ISLES is the plural, an ISLET is a small island and ISLED means formed into or set on an island. Every entry on the page traces back to the same stem.
Nobody pronounces the S in isle or island, and it was never there originally. Scribes inserted it centuries ago on the mistaken belief that the word came from Latin insula.
So this whole page exists because of a spelling error that stuck. The letter that defines the pattern is one that no speaker says.
All three open with I and all of them take E in the fourth box. Three letters appear in the last box, one for each word.
That makes the final letter the entire puzzle. Confirm it and you have the answer, and nothing earlier in the word will help you at all.
ISLES is the likeliest of the three in ordinary writing, with ISLET close behind. ISLED is rare enough that most readers would not recognise it.
It came from Old French ile, with no S at all. Early modern scholars added one to echo the Latin insula, and the spelling outlasted the reasoning.
An islet is simply a very small island. Both words describe the same thing at different scales.
Yes, though it is rare. It appears in poetry meaning set about with islands or made into an island.