Letters filled by a blank are underlined. Word list: ENABLE (public domain, 172,823 words), loaded the first time you search.
About this tool
This anagram solver, also called a word unscrambler, takes a jumble of letters and lists every word from the ENABLE word list that can be built from them. Full-length anagrams, the words that use every letter, are shown on their own at the top, and every shorter word is grouped by length with the longest first. You can add one or two blank tiles, set a minimum length, and keep only words that start with, end with or contain certain letters. The search runs entirely in your browser.
How to use the anagram solver
- Type your letters in the box, in any order. Upper or lower case makes no difference. Up to 20 tiles are accepted.
- Add blanks if you have them. Type
?or a space between letters for each blank. A blank stands for any letter, and up to two are allowed. Spaces at the very start or end are ignored, so a blank at the edge should be typed as?. - Pick a minimum length. The default is 3 letters. Choose 2 to include two-letter words, or raise it to cut a long list down to the useful words.
- Use the pattern filters when a word has to fit a spot on a board or in a puzzle. Starts with, Ends with and Contains each take plain letters, such as
re,ingorqu. Every word shown still has to be buildable from your tiles. - Click Find words or press Enter. The first search downloads the word list (about 1.7 MB before compression) and keeps it in memory, so later searches are instant.
- Copy all or Download .txt to get every match, one line per word length. The page displays the first 1,000 words; the copy and download always include the full list.
How the word unscrambler works
Trying every arrangement of your letters would be slow: 15 different letters can be ordered 1,307,674,368,000 ways, and most of those orders are not words. This tool works the other way round. It counts how many of each letter you have, then walks through all 172,823 words in the list once. For each word it subtracts the word's letters from your counts. If a count would go below zero, that letter has to come from a blank; if the word needs more blanks than you have, it is skipped. Words that pass are kept, sorted by length and then alphabetically.
Because the work is one pass over the list, the time barely depends on how many letters you enter. In testing in Node.js, a 15-letter search took a few milliseconds, and a 15-letter search with two blanks, which matches tens of thousands of words, took under 30 milliseconds. The pattern filters are applied before the letter check, so they make a search faster, not slower.
About the ENABLE word list
ENABLE (Enhanced North American Benchmark Lexicon) is a word list that its authors formally released into the public domain. The copy used here has 172,823 words from 2 to 28 letters, all lowercase with no capitals, hyphens or apostrophes, so it has no proper nouns. The longest entry is ethylenediaminetetraacetates. It is widely used in word-game software, but it is not the official dictionary of any particular game or tournament, so a word found here may not be accepted in every game, and some words that a game allows may be missing.
Worked example: LISTEN
The sample input is listen with the minimum length at 3. The solver finds 79 words in total:
- 6 full-length anagrams: elints, enlist, inlets, listen, silent and tinsel.
- 16 five-letter words, including inlet, islet, lines, stein, stile and tiles.
- 32 four-letter words, including isle, lens, lint, nest, silt and tile.
- 25 three-letter words, including let, lie, net, sit, ten and tin.
Set the minimum length to 2 and the count rises to 90, because two-letter words such as el, in and is are added. Type listen? to add one blank and the search finds 1,216 words of 3 letters or more, including 35 seven-letter words such as glisten, salient, stencil and utensil. In those results the letter supplied by the blank is underlined.
| Input | Min length | Words found | Full-length anagrams |
|---|---|---|---|
listen | 3 | 79 | 6 |
listen | 2 | 90 | 6 |
listen? | 3 | 1,216 | 35 |
Common mistakes
- Typing spaces between every letter. A space in the middle counts as a blank, so
l i s t e nmeans five blanks and is rejected. Type the letters together. - Counting a letter twice. Each tile can be used once. If you have two Es, type two Es; one E will never produce
teen. - Filters that your tiles cannot satisfy. Starts with
quonly finds words if you hold a Q and a U, or have blanks to cover them. - Expecting slang, names or brand words. The list holds ordinary dictionary words only.
Use cases
- Word games. See every playable option for a rack of tiles, including what a blank opens up.
- Crosswords and jumbles. Solve a scrambled-word puzzle, or use the Starts with and Ends with filters to fit known letters.
- Teaching spelling and vocabulary. Ask students how many words they can make from one long word, then check the list together.
- Naming and wordplay. Find hidden words and anagrams in a name or phrase.
To go the other direction and turn words into scrambled puzzles, use the Word Scrambler. The Random Letter Generator can deal a random set of letters to practise with, and the Text Sorter can reorder a copied word list by length or alphabetically.
Frequently asked questions
They do the same job from different angles. An anagram uses every letter exactly once, so a strict anagram solver only returns full-length words. A word unscrambler also lists the shorter words hidden in the letters. This tool does both: full-length anagrams are shown separately, and all shorter words follow, grouped by length.
Type a question mark, or a space between letters, for each blank. A blank can stand for any letter from A to Z, and you can use up to two. In the results, the letters that came from a blank are underlined, so you can see which tile you would need to play as the blank.
The solver only knows the words in the ENABLE list, which has no proper nouns, abbreviations, hyphenated words or most recent slang. A word can also be missing because your minimum length or pattern filters exclude it, or because you need one more copy of a letter than you entered.
No. Each result is a single word that can be built from your letters. Multi-word anagrams of a phrase, such as turning a full name into two or three words, are not generated. You can still type the phrase letters without spaces to see every single word hidden inside it.
After the first search, the word list stays in the page memory, so further searches work even if your connection drops, until you reload or close the tab. The first search needs a connection to download the list. Your letters are never sent anywhere; matching happens on your device.
Up to 20 tiles, counting blanks. Long inputs are still fast because the solver checks each dictionary word against your letter counts instead of trying every arrangement. With many letters and two blanks the list can run into tens of thousands of words, so raise the minimum length or use a filter to narrow it.