5 Letter Words Starting With CL

Ninety-five words begin with CL, and they are almost all verbs of contact or closure: CLAMP, CLASP, CLICK, CLIMB, CLOSE, CLUNK. The cluster rarely produces abstract nouns, which is why the list reads like a workshop inventory.

Fifty-seven entries carry one vowel and 38 carry two. There is not a single vowel-free CL-word, and nothing with three, so the shelf is unusually well behaved: every entry has exactly the vowel budget you would guess from looking at it.

CLOZE at 16 is the only entry above 13 points, which makes CL one of the flattest scoring shelves in the five-letter dictionary. Fifteen of the 95 are everyday answers, and 11 of those are isograms, so CLAIM, CLEAN, CLEAR, CLIMB, CLONE and CLOSE all give five fresh letters.

How many 5-letter words start with CL?

CL accounts for 95 entries out of the 12,478 five-letter words we accept, a share of 0.76 percent.

Read the last letters and a pattern appears immediately: -S finishes 26 words, -E finishes 16 and -K finishes 13. Between them those three endings cover 55 entries, 58 percent of the list.

Only 15 of the 95 appear in the everyday answer pool we use for daily puzzles. That is 16 percent — a workable bench.

The complete CL list (95 words)

Every entry below is alphabetised. Scores use standard English tile values. The CL pair is worth 4 points on its own. CLOZE at 16 is the best entry in the group.

Vowel shape and repeated letters in CL words

Break the 95 entries down by vowel count and the shelf organises itself. One vowel: 57 words. Two vowels: 38. Three vowels: 0. None: 0.

The zero bucket is empty: all 57 of the single-vowel entries still hold one of A, E, I, O or U.

Duplication runs through 16 percent of the set: 15 words repeat a letter, with 7 doubling it in place (CLASS, CLEEK, CLEEP, CLIFF). That leaves 80 pure isograms.

5 of these words contain a Y, and in CLARY, CLAYS, CLOYE it stands in for a vowel without ever being counted as one.

J, Q, X and Z in the CL list

Rare-tile holdings for CL: J in 0 of the 95 words, Q in 0, X in 0 and Z in 1.

Z is the most productive of the four, turning up in 1 entries (CLOZE).

That leaves 3 of the four premium tiles unusable here, which makes a CL play safe to place early.

For Scrabble that is a positional problem: only 1 CL-words clear 15 points, so value has to come from a hook.

Scrabble scores for CL words

Scrabble players should start at the top: CLOZE, worth 16 points, built from C3 + L1 + O1 + Z10 + E1.

Only 1 of the 95 entries clear the 15-point mark, and the average sits at 9.3, so this is a mid-value prefix with one or two spikes.

After CLOZE the list flattens fast: CLUCK and CLOFF both land on 13.

The floor is CLAES at 7 points (C3 + L1 + A1 + E1 + S1), which is what a worst-case rack looks like here.

How CL fits inside the C shelf

Zoom out one level and the arithmetic is worth knowing. The single-letter C shelf holds 888 five-letter words, and CL accounts for 95 of them — 11 percent of everything that starts with C.

The rest of that shelf is carved up by neighbouring clusters: CO (214), CA (163), CH (141), CR (103). That is the company this prefix keeps, and it explains why some CL-words feel like near-misses for a C-answer you already know.

Parent page for one green letter; this page for two.

Position three: what follows CL

Position three is the first free slot, so its distribution is the one that matters. O leads with 29 words, then A with 28 and E with 16.

The vowels are not spread evenly across that slot: A-28 E-16 I-14 O-29 U-7.

Position three never holds B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K.

Which letters the CL words actually use

Count every letter in the group and a personality emerges. Ignoring the fixed CL pair, the workhorses are E (35 words), A (33) and S (30).

At the other end H (3), B (3) and Z (1) barely appear at all. Those are the tiles a CL player should not count on.

And J, Q, X never show up anywhere in the 95 entries, which is the cleanest elimination fact on this page.

Best CL starting words for Wordle

Search the answer pool and 15 of these 95 words turn up, a hit rate of 16 percent.

Start with CLEAR: 2 vowels, five distinct letters and nothing wasted on a repeat.

Save CLASS, CLICK for a late row: 15 of the 95 entries repeat a letter, and a double is the hardest clue to confirm at distance.

The other 80 are probes rather than guesses.

The obscure end of the CL list

Every prefix has a shadow list, and for CL it looks like this: CLYPE (12 points), CLOOT (7 points), CLOAM (9 points), CLECK (13 points), CLACH (12 points).

Tournament word lists and crossword grids accept them; everyday conversation does not.

With only 95 words in the whole group, the five above are enough to cover the obscure end.

Endings, hooks and how the CL words behave in play

Look at final letters and the shelf sorts itself: 26 end in S, 16 in E, 1 in Y, 3 in D and 13 in K.

The group is plural-heavy: 26 of the 95 entries already end in S, so a spare S on your rack is a signal rather than a hook.

CLI- and CLO- split the shelf down the middle, and the -K tail (CLERK, CLINK, CLONK, CLUNK, CLOCK) is the sharpest sub-run.

In a crossword the CL block is dead weight; the middle letters carry the clue.

Frequently asked questions

Switch prefixes at the 5-letter word hub, or run these 95 CL-words through the Wordle solver once one is green. No fixed positions? Start at the jumble solver.