Jumble Solver

The Jumble has appeared in newspapers since the 1950s, and its format has barely changed. You get four scrambled words, usually two of five letters and two of six. Each one unscrambles to exactly one ordinary English word. Some squares in each answer are circled. When all four are solved, the circled letters are scrambled again to form the answer to a cartoon riddle, which is almost always a pun. The caption shows how many words the answer has and how long each one is.

That gives the puzzle two stages. Stage one is four short, strict anagrams. Stage two is a harder anagram of eight to twelve letters that splits into several words. The solver helps with both.

Enter one scrambled word at a time. Jumble words are chosen to have a single solution, so the top group of results normally holds just one word: KAEDB → baked, NUCLE → uncle, TOMFAR → format. If the top group has more than one word, check which candidate puts sensible letters in the circled squares. That usually settles it.

This page sorts common words first and hides two-letter words, because Jumble answers are always everyday vocabulary. If the answer still doesn't stand out, set Length under Advanced to the number of letters in the jumble so only full-length unjumbles remain.

The final answer is where most people get stuck, because the circled letters can make many word combinations. A practical approach:

1. Enter all circled letters in the solver without a length. You now see every word the letters can make.
2. Look at the caption. If the answer is shown as a four-letter word followed by a five-letter word, use the length buttons above the results to view only four-letter words, then only five-letter words.
3. Pick a word that fits the cartoon's theme. Remove its letters from your set and search again with what is left. If the remainder makes a real word of the right length, you are probably done.
4. Read the whole answer out loud. Jumble answers are puns, so if it makes you groan, it is probably right.

Multi-word answers often include short glue words like a, the, in or on. If one part of the caption is only one to three letters long, try those first. To let the computer split the circled letters for you, enter them in the Phrase Anagram Solver together with the word lengths shown in the caption.

• Solve the five-letter words first. They are quicker, and their circled letters give you a head start on the riddle.
• Think about the cartoon early. The scene often suggests the answer's vocabulary before you have every circled letter.
• Watch for -ED, -ER and -ING. Six-letter Jumble words very often end in one of them.
• Don't fight the letters. If nothing comes after a minute, enter the letters here and keep your streak alive. Seeing the answer also trains your eye for next time.

Jumble words are chosen from everyday vocabulary, so the same shapes show up week after week. Keep these in mind while you scan the letters:

• Six-letter words often end in -ER, -ED, -LY or -LE. Pull those letters to the end first and see whether the remaining four make a word.
• Five-letter words often end in a silent E or in Y. Try those endings before anything clever.
• Double letters (two Ls, two Ps, two Os) are usually next to each other in the answer.
• Awkward letters go first or last. A K, J or V usually sits at one end of the word, which narrows the arrangements a lot.

When a word refuses to come, paste it into the solver. Over time you'll start recognising these patterns on sight.

The same approach works for any scrambled-word puzzle. Single scrambles are handled by the word scramble solver. Racks where you want every possible word belong in the word unscrambler. Timed rack games like Text Twist have their own Text Twist solver. When you have some letters in place and need to fill the gaps, the crossword solver is a better fit.