Words That Start With N

N never draws attention to itself, and that is its strength. The letter opens 6,395 of the 264,179 words in this dictionary, costs one point in Scrabble and two in Words With Friends, and combines with almost anything. When your rack refuses to cooperate, an N word is often the play you find last but should have seen first.

No vowel, no problem

The star of the section is nth, as in the nth degree. It is a real, playable word with no A, E, I, O, U, or even Y, one of the very few in the entire dictionary that manages the trick. Nymph pulls a related stunt, scoring 15 points while dodging every ordinary vowel. For gentler exits, the two letter plays are na, ne, no, and nu, and the Greek letter nu is the one opponents forget exists.

Where N gets loud

For a one point tile, N leads into some noisy scores. Nozzle and nuzzle are twins at 24 points each, nudzh tops the five letter group at 18, and nix turns a dead corner into quick points whenever an X is loose. At the opposite extreme, the longest N entry is nonrepresentationalisms, twenty three letters of art criticism that will never fit a board but anchors the far end of the list.

An unusually flat mountain

Most letters spike hard at one length. N barely does: the eight letter group holds 751 words and the nine letter group 802, nearly a tie, with strong counts stretching well past ten letters. In practice that means long N racks stay live deeper into the game than you would expect from a mid size letter.

For daily puzzle players

The 295 five letter N words include noise, north, novel, nudge, and nurse, and yes, ninja and nacho are both legal here. N is a better second guess than opener, since it tests only one common consonant on its own.

Every number above is computed from the dictionary at build time. Filter by length, re-sort by points, tap any word to copy it, or hand your letters to the word finder to see which N words your rack really makes.