9 Letter Wordle Unlimited

The hardest length on the site: nine tiles, seven guesses, and words you have to build rather than guess.

Nine letters: the long game

Nine-letter words are almost always built from recognizable parts: a root and one or two affixes (un + comfort + able) or two words glued together (water + fall). That is good news. Once a guess lights up a chunk like -TION, -MENT or -ABLE, the word often snaps into place. Nearly nine in ten answers (89.2%) repeat at least one letter, so repeated E, T and N are the norm rather than the exception.

The answer list has 1,889 common nine-letter words, and 27,058 words are accepted as guesses. An answer has 3.54 vowels on average; E appears in 72.5% of them and I in 60.8%.

Best starting words for 9 letters

We scored every possible first guess against the full list of nine-letter answers and measured how well its colors split that list. The best everyday words to start with are COASTLINE, CONSULATE, MASCULINE, MODERNIST, SECTIONAL. COASTLINE leaves about 2.5 possible answers on average after the first guess. The full method is on the how to play page.

Two or three possible words after a single guess sounds easy, but finding them is the hard part: you have to think of words that fit, not pick from a list. The most common letters are E (72.5%), I (60.8%), T (59.6%), R (59.2%), A (58.4%), N (52.5%), and the most common first letters are C, S, A.

Tips from long-word players

• Write the pattern down. A scrap of paper with _ O _ _ T _ _ N E works wonders for long words.
• Try the ending first. -TION, -MENT, -NESS, -ABLE and -ENCE cover a big share of nine-letter words.
• Say it out loud. Long words have rhythm; sounding out the pattern often brings the word to mind.
• Daily version: the daily 9-letter puzzle gives everyone the same word until midnight Eastern Time.