SPITE

Meaning

Ill will or hatred toward another, accompanied with the desire to irritate, annoy, or thwart; a want to disturb or put out another; mild malice

“He was so filled with spite for his ex-wife, he could not hold down a job.”

• verbTo treat maliciously; to try to injure or thwart.

SPITE as a word-puzzle answer

SPITE is a 5-letter word with 2 vowels (I, E) and 3 consonants (S, P, T). Every letter is distinct, so it rarely punishes a clean opening guess.

It leans on high-frequency letters (S, I, T, E), so a strong vowel-and-common-consonant opener tends to light up quickly. There are no rare letters here, so it is a fair, mid-difficulty answer for the daily Classic puzzle.

SPITE by the numbers

Across the 2,412 curated answers in the Wordocious bank, E appears in 48% of answers (the 1st most common letter), T appears in 29% of answers (the 5th most common letter), I appears in 28% of answers (the 6th most common letter). 44 other answers share the opening “SP-”, so two green tiles up front still leave real guessing to do.

Difficulty: 2/5 — approachable, because 8+ near-miss answers compete for the same greens.

Near misses

One letter away in the answer bank: SPIKE, SPITZ, SPATE, SUITE, SPICE, SMITE, SPINE, SPIRE. Each of these turns four tiles green against SPITE — the classic endgame squeeze where spending a guess on the differing letter beats burning attempts on hope.

Same letters, different order: STIPE — yellow-heavy boards can be hiding this anagram instead.

Put it to use

Words like SPITE are exactly what the daily puzzles throw at you. Warm up in Practice, race the clock in the Daily Challenge, or study the best starting words before your next run. New to the multi-board modes? The mode guides cover all nine.