Quiz question

I asked Alexa and she does not know it!

I would have said Z because one can find a quite a few words when one put the letter U after Q.

It must be Z, surely?

If Welsh it's J K Q V X Z ?

Words like pizza use 2 Zs at a time (just to confuse). You never get 2 Qs at a time (or do you?)

According to funfacts the least used letters in order are: z, x, q and j. I think that this is probably about right.

On this page you can paste in any text and get an analysis of the percentages of each letter,

In artyyfarty's OP that is:-
s : 189
w : 86
l : 80
n : 77
f : 69
v : 63
q : 62
x : 62
k : 60
u : 55
y : 53
i : 48
r : 41
e : 37
t : 34
o : 31
m : 30
h : 24
a : 18
z : 16
p : 15
g : 9
d : 8
c : 7
b : 6
j : 0
That is not typical text, of course, because it specifically talks about Q and Z and the quiz.
Wonder what other bits of text I could paste in? I am off to find some quotes.

Forgot the link. www.richkni.co.uk/php/crypta/freq.php

Hang on. How can S be 189% ? That is almost twice as many Ss than text!

Confusing! They talk about percentages and then give you actual frequencies.

No, it is encrypting it and then telling you how many times each letter appears in the encrypted version, to help you decipher it.
Sorry - not as much fun as it seemed at first.

As you were.

?

Well I’m beginning to think we were undermarked, I demand a recount!

Q, and it needs to be followed by a u and then another vowel, I'm trying to think of an exception to that maybe there is one. Z, quite difficult but it pops up with appropriated Italian words such as pizza and piazza. K is sometimes reliant on a following n, similarly x often needs a preceding e, and thank god for "sex" if you really need to park your "x" somewhere, I thinking scrabble! J appears to be one of the most under used letters as well.

Quran?

Qantas? (but doesnt count as an acronym.) Qi is acceptable in online scrabble!

No, doesn't count!
"Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services"

z, x, q and j.

J? I use it all the time!

Q can be used on it's own, I know English Language requires the U but some others don't.

Qat is also acceptable in Scrabble

Have you nerds got nothing better to do?

Seems queer that a quiz question should give 'q' as the answer. Can quickly think of a quantity of words that use 'q' quite often.
I'm with 'z'
Hope it wasn't a vital question that stopped you winning.

Usually any European language that still uses q follows it with a u. However, when writing Arabic, Hebrew, Hindustani and other languages that do not use our alphabet it is considered correct not to follow q with a u!

Confused?

As to whether q or z is the least used letter in English, I don't know, my dictionary has six and a quarter pages of words beginning with z and ten and about five lines of words beginning with q, but obviously that doesn't tell us how often anyone uses these words, nor does it help with words containing either letter as opposed to beginning with it.

Bit of an ambiguous question really. If we had got it right we would have gone through to a tiebreaker. The prize was only a bottle of wine anyway!

It seems to me to be one of those threads for those with nothing else to do. There is no definitive answer.

I'm sure there'll always be some confusion over this. MIL used to do those blank puzzles where you filled in all the letters of the alphabet by starting off with a couple of clues.
The letters X, Z, Q, J and K were always little used.