Enter criteria and click Find Words
112 five letter words start with Z, and a large share of them are place names and borrowed terms.
O takes about twenty nine percent, I twenty six, A eighteen and E sixteen. Y and U share the small remainder.
ZONES, ZEBRA, ZEROS and ZONED are the entries in ordinary use, with ZESTY and ZILCH behind them.
The rest of the list runs heavily to place names and currencies, so the usable count is a fraction of 112.
Z appears in fewer five letter words than any other letter, so an early Z guess eliminates almost nothing.
Play a Z word only when the Z is already confirmed in the first box, and then the page narrows very quickly.
ZONES is the guess to start with. It is the most common entry and its O, N, E and S cover four high frequency letters.
Z is rare in native English roots and arrived mostly through Greek, Arabic and place names, which is what fills this list.
They share four letters and differ in the last box, so landing either one resolves the other on the spot.
It names the Polish currency and it is in the list, though whether a puzzle would use it depends on the word list behind that puzzle.