Word unscrambler

How the word unscrambler works

The unscrambler checks your letters against a dictionary of 273,766 English words and keeps every word you can spell with them, using each letter at most once. Unlike an anagram, a word doesn't have to use all of your letters, so a handful of letters usually makes dozens of words. They are grouped by length, longest first, because the longest word is usually what a jumble puzzle or a word game is asking for. Within each length, the dictionary's 38,868 everyday words are listed before the rare ones.

Example: the letters in LISTEN

Six letters, L, I, S, T, E and N, make 119 words. Of those, 7 use all six letters: ENLIST, INLETS, LISTEN, SILENT, TINSEL, ELINTS, INTELS. Here is how they all break down by length:

What a blank adds

A blank, typed as ?, can be any letter, which multiplies the choices. Add one blank to LISTEN and the count jumps from 119 to 1,713 words, including 51 seven-letter words such as CLIENTS, ENLISTS, ENTAILS, GLISTEN, LENTILS, LISTENS, SALIENT, SILENTS. In the results, the letter a blank stands for is underlined.

More examples

How many words some everyday sets of letters make, and their longest common words:

The last row, AEINRST, is well known to tile-game players: seven of the most common letters, which together make 350 words, 11 of them seven letters long.

Narrowing the list with filters

A long list is useful when you want every option, but most puzzles give you a hint about the shape of the answer. The filters keep only the words that start with, end with or contain the letters you type, or that have an exact length. From TEACHER, for example, the filter ends with ER leaves 15 of the 152 words, everyday ones such as TEACHER, HEATER, CATER, CHEER, EATER, ETHER first. Filter letters still have to come from your letters, so a filter that asks for a letter you don't have leaves nothing.

Tips for unscrambling by hand

• Look for endings first. -ING, -ED, -ER, -EST, -LY and a final S turn a short word into a long one. Set them aside and unscramble what's left.
• Then look for beginnings such as RE-, UN-, DE-, IN- and PRE-.
• Pair up consonants that like to sit together: CH, SH, TH, PH, CK, ST, TR and BL.
• Count the vowels. Nearly every word needs one, and long words usually need several. Short of vowels? Remember that Y often acts as one.
• Rearrange the letters on paper in a circle instead of a row: it breaks the order you first saw them in.

To use every letter, or to anagram a name or phrase, try the anagram solver. For tile games with letters already on the board and tile scores, use the word finder. For crosswords with a few letters filled in, use the crossword solver, and for five-letter guessing games, the 5-letter word finder.