Full anagrams or shorter words
A true anagram uses every letter exactly once. SILENT and LISTEN are anagrams; so are DUSTY and STUDY. Turn on Use every letter when the answer has to contain the complete set — that is the setting for anagram puzzles, cryptic crossword fodder and a full Scrabble rack.
Leave it off and you get every word the letters can make, long and short. That is the more useful mode when you are looking for something playable rather than something exact, and it is what most sites mean by a word unscrambler.
Blank letters
A question mark stands for any one letter. GARDE? returns GARDEN. A rack with two blank tiles is written AELRT??. Each question mark is exactly one letter, never more, so the word length is always predictable.
Everyday words or the full dictionary
Everyday words is a shorter, more familiar set — the words people actually use. Dictionary words widens the search to less common entries. Start narrow and widen only when the answer is not there. Widening first is how you end up scrolling past two hundred words you have never seen to find the one you wanted.
A hint instead of the answer
Solving an anagram yourself is most of the pleasure of it, and being handed the word ends the puzzle. Hint mode reveals one thing at a time: how many letters, then the first letter, then the last, then how many vowels. Stop whenever you have enough.
How to solve an anagram yourself
When a group of letters stops looking like language, the problem is usually that you keep reading it in the same order. Change the shape of it instead.
- Separate vowels from consonants. English alternates between the two. Seeing that you have only one vowel for six consonants rules out most arrangements immediately.
- Look for common pairs. TH, SH, CH, ST, TR, BR, EA, AI, OU. A pair that works gives the remaining letters somewhere to attach.
- Test familiar beginnings and endings. RE-, UN-, IN-, DIS-, and -ED, -ER, -ING, -LY, -TION, -NESS. Endings are usually more productive than beginnings, because they consume more letters at once.
- Break the visual pattern. Write the letters in a circle, or in a different order. Staring at the same line reinforces the reading you are stuck in.
- Use the clue. In a cryptic crossword the anagram fodder is almost always beside an indicator word — confused, broken, arranged, oddly — and the rest of the clue defines the answer. The definition narrows the candidates far faster than the letters do.
One thing worth knowing
LikelyWord is not an official game dictionary. Results come from a general US English word-frequency list. Scrabble, Words With Friends and individual crossword publishers each use their own allowed-word lists, and they do not agree with each other. A word found here may still be challenged at the table. Most word finders do not say this; it seemed more useful than implying an authority we do not have.
Common questions
What is the difference between an anagram solver and a word unscrambler?
In practice, the setting. An anagram uses every letter exactly once — SILENT and LISTEN are anagrams of each other. A word unscrambler will also return shorter words made from some of the letters. LikelyWord does both: turn on “Use every letter” for true anagrams, leave it off to see everything the letters can make.
Can I solve an anagram with a missing or unknown letter?
Yes. Type a question mark for each unknown letter. GARDE? returns GARDEN, and a rack with two blank tiles can be written as AELRT?? — each question mark stands for exactly one letter.
Why are the results ranked this way?
By how often each word is actually used in English, not alphabetically and not by length. Most anagram answers are ordinary words, so ordering by familiarity puts the likely answer near the top instead of behind a wall of valid but unheard-of entries.
Is this an official Scrabble or Words With Friends word list?
No. Results come from a general US English frequency list. Scrabble, Words With Friends and individual crossword publishers each maintain their own allowed-word lists, so a word found here can still be challenged in a game.
Can I solve an anagram without seeing the answer?
Yes. Switch on hint mode and each result reveals gradually — length first, then the first letter, then the last letter, then the vowel count, and only then the word. It is designed for people who want a nudge rather than the solution.
Related tools
Working from a grid rather than loose letters? The crossword helper matches a pattern such as C??S?W?RD instead of a set of letters. The word unscrambler is the same engine framed around letter racks, and the word lists cover words by length and by first or last letter.