Word pattern finder

Type the letters you know and a ? for each one you don't: ?a??e finds every five-letter word with A second and E last. . _ and * work for gaps too. Not in the gaps rules letters out, which suits Wordle, where a grey letter can't be anywhere.

Switch Pattern to Cryptogram shape and type a cipher word as it appears, like XQZZX. You get every word with the same shape: first and last letters the same, middle two the same, the rest all different.

In a cryptogram, each letter stands for another, so a word keeps its shape. A cipher word like ABCCA can only be a word whose first and last letters match and whose third and fourth match, like SELLS. TEETH has the wrong shape, so it's ruled out. Long words with repeated letters have few possible matches, which makes them the best place to start.

The cryptograms and StringMash Daily are good practice, and the substitution solver finds the whole key by itself.

The word list is ENABLE, a public-domain list of about 172,000 English words that many word games are built on. Offensive words, and their plurals and simple endings, are taken out using the LDNOOBW list. It downloads once, about 370 KB, the first time you type, and what you type stays on your device.