Q without U, the full story and the list

QI settles arguments at kitchen tables. Someone draws the Q, someone else says there is no word for it without a U, and a third person produces QI, the word for the vital force in Chinese philosophy, and wins the evening. So the first thing this guide has to tell you is an awkward one. Our word checker says no to QI. It is a real tournament word, it was added to the official lists years after our word list was compiled, and it is not in ENABLE, the list every Pangramist tool checks against. If you came here for one word to save a stuck Q, our list has a different one for you. It is QAT, and it has been saving racks since long before QI was playable.

Why Q travels with U

English spelling took its habits from Latin by way of French. In Latin, the letter Q was never really a letter on its own. It was one half of a pair, QU, used to write a sound a bit like our KW, and French scribes kept the pair when English borrowed their spelling habits wholesale. The words came in wearing the pair: queen, quick, quiet, question. Native English never developed a use for a lone Q, because the sound it marked always arrived with the U attached.

That is why nearly every Q word in the language is a QU word. The exceptions did not grow up in English at all. They arrived later, as borrowings from languages that write a deep-in-the-throat K sound with the letter Q and mean nothing by its neighbour. When a word is carried across from Arabic, Hebrew, or an Inuit language, its spelling comes with it, U or no U. The Q words without U are not rebels against the rule. They are visitors who never heard of it.

Where the exceptions come from

Most of them are Arabic in origin, which is why so many of them describe the Arab world: QAT, a shrub whose leaves are chewed as a stimulant; QAID, a Muslim leader or chief; QANAT, an underground channel built to carry water to dry land; FAQIR, a Muslim or Hindu religious man who has given up possessions; and SUQ, a market, which carries its U at the end instead of after the Q. Hebrew gives the list QOPH, a letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and SHEQEL, a coin and unit of money in Israel, whose plural SHEQALIM is the longest word in the set along with QINDARKA, one of the Albanian currency words. From Inuit languages come UMIAQ, an open boat, and QIVIUT, the soft underwool of a musk ox, both with their U tucked in the middle. And the most modern word on the list grew up in English after all: QWERTY, the keyboard layout, which keeps the Q away from any U by sitting it at the far end of the row.

One caution before the list itself. On this page, a Q word without U means a word where Q is not followed by U. A few of these words contain a U somewhere else, SUQ and QIVIUT among them, and that is fine. What saves your rack is that none of them needs the U tile sitting next to the Q.

The full list, as our list holds it

Twenty-nine words. That is the whole set in ENABLE, and here it is by length.

Three letters: QAT, SUQ.

Four letters: QAID, QATS, QOPH, SUQS.

Five letters: FAQIR, QAIDS, QANAT, QOPHS, TRANQ, UMIAQ.

Six letters: BUQSHA, FAQIRS, QANATS, QINDAR, QINTAR, QIVIUT, QWERTY, SHEQEL, TRANQS, UMIAQS.

Seven letters: BUQSHAS, QINDARS, QINTARS, QIVIUTS, QWERTYS.

Eight letters: QINDARKA, SHEQALIM.

TRANQ, an informal word for a tranquilizer, is worth a second look, because it ends in Q instead of starting with it, and end-of-word Qs are rare enough to forget under pressure. BUQSHA is a small coin that was used in Yemen. QINDAR and QINTAR are units of Albanian money. Every word above is in our list, and every one of them can be checked on its own word page.

The honest note about other lists

The tournament lists hold more of these words than we do. QI is the famous one, and it is not alone. The official lists have gone on collecting borrowings since our list was frozen in the late nineties, and a few of our words sit near the edge of what different lists accept. So treat this page as the truth about one list, ours, and not as a ruling on yours. If you play in a rated event, the word list that governs your game is the one your event names, and for rated or tournament play you should check the official list. At a kitchen table, this list and the checker below are the house rules, and they are the same for everyone playing.

Check your rack

You do not have to memorise twenty-nine words to use them. Open the Pangramist Q without U list when a lone Q lands on your rack and scan it against your other letters, or type the word you are hoping for into the word checker and get a straight yes or no about our list in one second. Learn QAT and QOPH by heart, keep the list a tap away for the rest, and the Q stops being the tile you dread.