Q is the letter players fear, and this page is the antidote. It lists all 1,342 words that start with Q, the smallest family of any letter, small enough that studying it seriously is actually possible. Feed your tiles into the filter above and you will know in a second whether that Q is an anchor or a weapon.
The Q without U survival kit
The question every Scrabble player eventually asks: what do I do with a Q and no U? YAWL gives you fifteen answers. QAT is a leafy shrub, QAID is a Muslim leader, QOPH is a Hebrew letter, QANAT is an ancient irrigation channel, QINDAR and QINTAR are Albanian coins, and QWERTY is the keyboard layout you already know. With plurals, and the odd form QINDARKA, that is the entire no U arsenal. Learn the four short ones and a stranded Q stops being a ten point liability.
Everything else takes the U
Outside that survival kit, every single Q word here runs straight into QU, from QUA and QAT at three letters through QUARTZ, QUELL, and QUERY to giants like QUATTUORDECILLIONS, an eighteen letter number name. There are no two letter Q words in this dictionary at all, so plan your endgame accordingly.
Scoring with the ten point tile
Because Q is worth ten on its own, even modest plays score well. QUAKY earns 21 points on five tiles, and QUACK, QUAFF, QUICK, and QUIFF all land 20. QOPHS pays 19 while burning zero U tiles. Up the rack, QUIZZED reaches 35, QUETZAL 25, and the champion QUIZZICALITY hits 44. Fans of Scrabble history will also find QUIXOTRY in the list, the word behind one of the most famous single plays ever recorded.
The shape of the family
Five letter puzzle players have 73 options, from QUICK and QUIET to QUEEN, and the family is thickest at eight letters with 218 entries. Every count on this page is computed from the source dictionary when the site is built, and the dictionary page publishes the full table if you want to see how Q compares with the other twenty five letters.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you play a Q without a U?
Yes. YAWL contains fifteen Q words that never touch a U: QAID, QAIDS, QANAT, QANATS, QAT, QATS, QINDAR, QINDARKA, QINDARS, QINTAR, QINTARS, QOPH, QOPHS, QWERTY, and QWERTYS. Memorize QAT, QAID, and QOPH first, they are the ones you can most often actually fit on a board.
Is QI a legal word here?
No. QI does not appear in YAWL, the public domain list this site is built on, so there are no two letter Q words in our results. Some newer tournament dictionaries do accept QI, which is why other tools may show it. Our /dictionary/ page explains exactly which list we use and how to verify what is in it.
How many Q words are there in total?
The dictionary contains 1,342 words that start with Q, the smallest starting letter family in the entire list of 264,179 entries. Small is not weak: the Q tile is worth ten points, so the family punches far above its size.
What is the highest scoring Q word?
QUIZZICALITY leads the family at 44 points, and QUIZZICALLY is right behind at 43. On a normal rack, QUIZZED at 35 points across seven letters is the realistic monster, since it needs the blank for the second Z.