I hesitate to say so, but this came to me in a dream last night, so I felt that was significant enough to go ahead and post this. There may be similar threads but I haven’t tried to locate them. Treat this as a game or a challenge or a way to kill some time, but see if you can top what’s been posted already, assuming something is.
The basic idea is to come up with word groups that consist of standard spellings of relatively common (not archaic) words that differ only in the vowels employed. Include w and y vowels if they apply.
A sample: last lest list lost lust
Finding a group with double vowels (may be tough) would be great, or multi-syllable words, or some other standout feature.
If a word gets close to being “common” and can at least be found in a “collegiate” (or better) dictionary, go ahead and use it.
Participants in the thread may vote on which group is “the best” once we have some to consider.
As an effort to move the thinking “outside the box” and to take a few liberties with the concept of “common” by adding a proper name to the list, how about:
pale, Pele, pile, pole, pule, and Pyle (just to get at least one group with a y word, proper name though it is.)
I’d be willing to bet that some of these have passed through more than a few minds in the process of trying to find groups that pass the OP test for spellings, so to get them off my mind, and perhaps yours, here are a few groups to sponsor a spinoff/hijack:
say, see, sigh, sow, sue
bay, bee, bye, bow, boo
lay, lee, lie, low, lieu
may, me, my, mow, moo/mu
day, Dee, die, doe, due
ray, Ree, rye, row, rue
If you have had similarly distracting “almosts” interfering with your thinking, might as well list them and get them out there – at least for the laughs.