When you need a word with no vowels
Sooner or later every Scrabble and Words With Friends player stares at a rack like BCDHRST. It feels unplayable, but it is not. There are 121 words in our dictionary with no A, E, I, O or U, and a handful of them are short, common enough to remember, and easy to fit onto a crowded board.
How often does this happen? We worked it out from the tile counts. A Scrabble bag holds 42 vowel tiles out of 100, so a fresh seven-tile draw from a full bag comes up with no vowel at all about 1.9% of the time, roughly once in 53 draws, and with exactly one vowel about 11% of the time. In a real game the odds drift with what has already been played, and a rack that keeps consonants turn after turn gets worse quickly. Knowing the words on this page is what lets you play your way out instead of throwing a turn away.
The 20 words with no vowels at all
These words have no A, E, I, O, U or Y. They are mostly interjections (sounds like BRR, HMM, PSST and SHH) plus two borrowings from Welsh, CWM and CRWTH, where W works as a vowel. TSK is a verb, so it also takes TSKS, and doubles up as TSKTSK.
| Word | Meaning | Scrabble | WWF |
|---|---|---|---|
| BRR | expresses that you are cold | 5 | 6 |
| BRRR | variant of brr | 6 | 7 |
| CRWTH | an ancient Welsh stringed instrument, played with a bow | 13 | 13 |
| CRWTHS | plural of crwth | 14 | 14 |
| CWM | a bowl-shaped hollow at the head of a mountain valley (Welsh) | 10 | 12 |
| CWMS | plural of cwm | 11 | 13 |
| HM | expresses thought or doubt | 7 | 7 |
| HMM | variant of hm | 10 | 11 |
| MM | expresses assent or pleasure | 6 | 8 |
| NTH | the last in an indefinitely long series | 6 | 6 |
| PFFT | expresses a sudden ending or dismissal | 12 | 13 |
| PHPHT | variant of pht | 15 | 15 |
| PHT | expresses mild annoyance | 8 | 8 |
| PSST | used to get someone's attention quietly | 6 | 7 |
| SH | urges silence | 5 | 4 |
| SHH | variant of sh | 9 | 7 |
| TSK | to make a clicking sound of disapproval | 7 | 7 |
| TSKS | form of tsk | 8 | 8 |
| TSKTSK | to tsk | 14 | 14 |
| TSKTSKS | form of tsktsk | 15 | 15 |
Words where Y does the work
The other 101 words use Y in place of a vowel. These are the ones you will actually play most often, because the short ones are everyday English: BY, BYS, CRY, DRY, FLY, FRY, GYM, GYP, HYP, MY, PLY, PRY, PYX, SHY, SKY, SLY, SPY, STY, SYN, THY, TRY, WHY, WRY, WYN. Holding a Y turns a consonant-only rack into one with real options.
Longer Y words cluster around a few shapes worth learning: the GLYPH family (GLYPH, LYMPH, NYMPH, SYLPH), the SYNTH family (SYNC, SYNCH, SYNTH) and the RHYTHM, MYTH and HYMN group. 19 words need two Ys or more, including DRYLY, FLYBY, FLYBYS, GLYCYL, GLYCYLS, GYPSY, so they usually need a blank or a Y already on the board.
| Length | Words | With no Y | Highest-scoring |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 letters | 5 | 3 | BY, HM, MY, MM, SH |
| 3 letters | 29 | 7 | PYX, WHY, HYP, CWM, HMM |
| 4 letters | 27 | 5 | WYCH, LYNX, XYST, WHYS, HYMN |
| 5 letters | 36 | 2 | XYLYL, FLYBY, MYTHY, PYGMY, THYMY |
| 6 letters | 21 | 2 | SYZYGY, XYLYLS, FLYBYS, FLYSCH, RHYTHM |
| 7 letters | 3 | 1 | RHYTHMS, GLYCYLS, TSKTSKS |
Highest-scoring words without vowels
Tile totals before premium squares. Y is worth 4 in Scrabble but 3 in Words With Friends, and H drops from 4 to 3 as well, so most of these words score a little less in Words With Friends.
| Word | Scrabble points | WWF points |
|---|---|---|
| SYZYGY | 25 | 23 |
| XYLYLS | 19 | 19 |
| RHYTHMS | 18 | 16 |
| XYLYL | 18 | 18 |
| FLYBYS | 17 | 17 |
| FLYSCH | 17 | 17 |
| RHYTHM | 17 | 15 |
| SYLPHY | 17 | 16 |
| FLYBY | 16 | 16 |
| GLYCYLS | 16 | 18 |
| LYMPHS | 16 | 17 |
| MYTHY | 16 | 14 |
| NYMPHS | 16 | 17 |
| PSYCHS | 16 | 16 |
| PYGMY | 16 | 17 |
Which ones take an S
37 of these words take an S on the end and stay vowel-free, which means you can hook an S onto them when they are already on the board, or play them with an S to reach a better square. Of the words with no Y, the ones that take an S are CRWTH, CWM, TSK and TSKTSK. The full set: BY, BYRL, CRWTH, CRYPT, CWM, CYST, DRY, FLYBY, GHYLL, GLYCYL, GLYPH, GYM, GYP, HYMN, HYP, LYMPH, MYRRH, MYTH, NYMPH, PSYCH, RHYTHM, RYND, SYLPH, SYNC, SYNCH, SYNTH, SYPH, TRYST, TSK, TSKTSK, TYPP, WHY, WYN, WYND, WYNN, XYLYL, XYST.
A plan for a rack with no vowels
- Check the short pure words first. NTH, TSK, SHH, HMM, BRR, PSST and CWM need no vowel and no Y. If you hold the letters, one of them often fits somewhere.
- Play through a vowel on the board. Your rack may have no vowels, but the board has plenty. Building through an existing A or E opens up thousands of ordinary words. The Scrabble Word Finder lets you add board letters to your rack to see what fits.
- Spend more than one consonant. A play that uses three or four consonants draws you three or four new tiles, each with a 42 in 100 chance of being a vowel from a full bag. Dumping a single tile barely changes the rack.
- Treat Y as your vowel. With a Y, words like CRYPT, GLYPH, NYMPH, TRYST and PSYCH become possible, and many of them score well.
- Know when to exchange. If nothing scores and the bag still has plenty of tiles, an exchange that keeps your best two or three consonants is usually stronger than a tiny play that keeps the jam.
For broader rack management, see the Scrabble strategy guide, and for the two-letter words with no vowel or Y (HM, MM, SH), the 2 letter words list.