Enter criteria and click Find Words
801 five letter words start with D, and the five vowels between them take almost the whole group.
E leads at about twenty percent, O at eighteen, A and I at sixteen each and U at twelve. R adds another eleven through the DR blend.
DRIVE, DRINK, DRAFT, DREAM and DRESS all push the vowel into the third box. That shape sets them apart from the rest of the group entirely.
At eleven percent the branch is small, but the words on it are common enough to be worth an early test.
DEALS, DEATH and DEPTH sit on the E branch, DOING and DOLLS on the O, DAILY and DANCE on the A. None of the three holds a family the way DR does.
So the practical split here is DR against everything else. Testing it early either drops you into a tight family or clears eleven percent in one turn.
DEALS. Its E, A, L and S are four of the commonest letters at this length, while the V in DRIVE appears in very little.
D sits comfortably before every vowel in English, and unlike M it also forms the DR blend. That gives it six live branches rather than five.
They share their first two letters and all put the vowel third, so confirming DR narrows the group faster than confirming any single vowel does.