Word Unscrambler

Unscrambling is a counting problem. A word fits your letters when every letter in it appears in your set at least as often as the word needs it. The tool runs that test against more than 270,000 English words, the combined US Scrabble, UK Scrabble and Words With Friends lists, and returns every match in a few milliseconds.

Results are grouped by length, longest first, because that is usually what you want: the full-length anagram, if one exists, then the shorter words hiding inside. Within each group, words are sorted by points. Change the sort to Most common to bring everyday words like silent and listen above rarer ones like elints.

Blank tiles are typed as ? (or a space). Each blank can become any letter once. Letters a blank supplies are shown in grey, so you can see which part of the word you actually had. Blanks also help with puzzles that say one letter is missing, or with a jumble where one letter is hard to read: type the letters you have plus one ? and set the length.

Three to five letters

Short sets give short, clean lists. EVIL unscrambles to live, vile and veil, plus a handful of two- and three-letter words. These lists are handy for checking whether a short anagram exists at all.

Six to eight letters

This is where an unscrambler earns its keep. LISTEN gives more than a hundred words, seven of them six letters long. Eight letters such as TPYRCSOE produce several hundred words, including copters, cryptos and cotypes. Nobody finds all of those by staring.

Nine letters and up, or blanks

Long sets and blanks multiply the results. One blank added to GARDNE turns up over two dozen seven-letter words, from granted and reading to grenade and enraged. Use the length filter or the length buttons above the results to jump straight to the size you need.

Use the tool when you are stuck, but these habits will make you faster on your own:

• Pull out common endings first. If you see I, N and G, set aside -ING and work with what is left. The same goes for -ED, -ER, -EST, -LY and -TION. You can also browse words ending in ING.
• Look for consonant pairs. CH, SH, TH, PH, CK, ST, BL and TR usually sit together. Treat them as one block and you have fewer pieces to arrange.
• Alternate vowels and consonants. Most English words roughly alternate. Laying the letters out as consonant-vowel-consonant often makes a word appear.
• Place the awkward letters first. Q almost always wants U. J, V, X and Z have only a few comfortable positions, so try them at the start or end before you shuffle the rest.
• Try likely first letters. S, C, P, T and B start more English words than any other letters. Lists like words starting with S show why.
• Peel off prefixes too. RE-, UN-, IN-, DE- and PRE- turn a long, awkward set into a short one. Doubled letters such as two Ls or two Ps often sit side by side, so try the pair together first.

All English words is the default and the most generous. It contains every word accepted by at least one of the major game lists. That makes it the right choice for puzzles, quizzes and general curiosity. If you are playing a specific game, switch lists so you don't plan around a word your game will reject:

• Scrabble US (TWL) for North American Scrabble. See also our Scrabble word finder.
• Scrabble UK (Collins) for British and international Scrabble.
• Words With Friends (ENABLE) for WWF and the many mobile games built on the same list. See also the WWF word finder.

Your choice is remembered on this device, so you only need to set it once.

People reach for an unscrambler for all sorts of reasons. They solve newspaper jumbles and anagram clues in cryptic crosswords, get past a stuck level in a letter-wheel game, or find the bingo they missed after a Scrabble game. Teachers build spelling and vocabulary exercises with it, and writers use it to find names and wordplay. If your puzzle needs words of one exact size, our five-letter and seven-letter word lists are good next stops.

The Scramble a word tab at the top of the page works the other way around. Type a word and it mixes up the letters, so you can set a scramble for a friend or a class. Run the scrambled letters back through the finder and you have an answer key that lists every bonus word too.