Common nine-letter words and how to spot them

Common nine-letter words include beginning, countries, reference, locations, sometimes, difficult, excellent, dangerous and childhood. Most of them follow a few shapes: a common ending such as -ING or -TION, a common start such as RE- or CO-, or two short words joined together.

Knowing those shapes is what helps in a word puzzle. To find out which shapes matter most, we counted the nine-letter words in the common English word list that Ninefold grids are built from. There are 1,664 of them. The groups below come from that count.

One promise before the list: we checked every word on this page against all Ninefold grids, past and planned, on both levels. None of the listed words is a nine-letter answer, so you can read on without spoiling a grid.

Which nine-letter words end in -ING?

-ING is the single most common ending. 189 of the 1,664 words end in it, more than one in nine. These are verbs with a stem of five or six letters:

• beginning
• happening
• streaming
• including
• involving
• financing
• requiring

Notice how often the stem changes a little. BEGIN doubles its N to make BEGINNING, and INCLUDE drops its final E to make INCLUDING. If a grid has I, N and G but the leftover six letters will not make a word, try adding or removing a letter from the stem in your head.

Which ones end in -TION or -TIONS?

The -TION family is the next biggest. 63 words end in -TION, such as intention, imitation and intuition, and 19 more end in -TIONS. The plurals are the easiest to spot:

• locations
• relations
• positions
• elections
• donations
• vacations
• reactions
• additions

When you see T, I, O and N together, set them aside. A plural S often comes with them, which leaves only three or four letters to place.

Which ones end in -OUS?

-OUS words are describing words, and many common ones run to exactly nine letters:

• dangerous
• religious
• anonymous
• hazardous
• delicious
• conscious
• hilarious
• ambitious

They are easy to miss because the O and U are pulled away from the rest of the vowels. If a jumble has O, U and S and looks short on other vowels, test the -OUS ending.

What are the most common starts?

The ends of a word give more away than the start, but a few openings are worth knowing. In our count, 110 words start with CO, 103 with RE and 76 with IN. A further 72 start with PR.

• CO: countries, consumers, contracts, conflicts
• RE: reference, residents, responses, retailers

A start plus an ending often covers most of the word. RESPONSES is RE + SPON + SES, and CONFLICTS is CON + FLICT + S.

Which nine-letter words are two words joined?

Compound words are the easiest to spot once you look for them, because each half is a short, familiar word:

• sometimes (some + times)
• ourselves (our + selves)
• headlines (head + lines)
• textbooks (text + books)
• notebooks (note + books)
• workshops (work + shops)
• childhood (child + hood)
• highlight (high + light)

If you find a four- or five-letter word in a jumble and the leftover letters also spell a word, try putting them side by side.

Which letters end the most nine-letter words?

The last letter is the best single clue. Here is how the 1,664 words in our count end:

Last letter	Words	Share
S	406	24%
E	261	16%
D	218	13%
G	189	11%
Y	131	8%
N	124	7%

Those six letters end more than three in four nine-letter words. In a jumble with an S, try it at the end first. With a G, try -ING. With a D, try -ED.

How do you use this list in a puzzle?

Start from the shape, not the letters. Look for an ending you know, pull it out, and see what the rest can spell. That is the same habit our suffixes that unlock almost every grid guide teaches in more depth, and how to find the nine-letter word in under two minutes walks through a full example.

If you are working from a plain jumble with no grid, see how to unscramble a nine-letter word. Then try it for real on today's Ninefold.