Word Descrambler
Type a jumble of letters and this word descrambler shows you the words hiding in them, longest first. If your puzzle has one right answer, tick use every letter and you will almost always be left with it.
Up to 15 letters. Use ? for a letter you cannot read.
Where the jumbles come from
If you are here because a game gave you a scramble, you might like the one this was built for. Anagrove hands everybody the same six letters each day — five ordinary words to find, and then every other word you can spot in the same six. There are usually about forty.
How to unscramble a word
- Type every letter you have. The order does not matter at all — dnarge, garden and ranged are the same jumble as far as this is concerned.
- Tick "use every letter" if the puzzle has one answer. Scrambled-word puzzles almost always want a word that uses the whole jumble. Ticking the box throws away the shorter words and usually leaves you with a single line.
- Leave it unticked if you are playing a tile game. Then you get everything your letters can make, at any length, which is the useful answer when you are looking for a place to play.
- Use
?for anything you cannot read. Handwriting, a blurry photo, a blank tile — a question mark tries every letter in that position.
Tricks for doing it in your head
- Look for the ending first. Most scrambles hide an ordinary ending. If you can see -ING, -ED, -ER, -LY or -TION in the letters, pull it out and you have turned a seven-letter problem into a four-letter one.
- Then look for a pair that must sit together. A Q is nearly always followed by a U. C and H, S and H, T and H like each other. Fixing one pair cuts the possibilities enormously.
- Write the letters in a circle. A straight line makes your eye keep reading the same wrong word. A circle has no beginning, so you stop seeing the jumble as an order.
- Count the vowels. Three vowels in seven letters usually means two syllables, and that tells you roughly where they fall.
Questions people ask
- What does a word descrambler do?
- You give it a jumble of letters and it finds the real words hiding in them. Type the scrambled letters, press Unscramble, and it checks all 172,000 words in its dictionary against what you gave it. If the jumble has one right answer it will usually be the longest word in the list.
- How do I unscramble a word with one answer?
- Type all the letters and tick 'Use every letter'. That throws away anything shorter and leaves only the words that use your whole jumble — which is what a scrambled-word puzzle is asking for. Most jumbles have exactly one such word.
- What if there is a blank or a letter I cannot read?
- Type a question mark in its place. Each question mark stands in for any letter of the alphabet. One or two is useful; more than that and so much matches that the answer stops being an answer.
- Does it work for Scrabble and Words With Friends?
- Yes. The dictionary is ENABLE, the list Words With Friends was built from, so a word here is very likely accepted there. Leave 'Use every letter' unticked and you get every word your rack can make, not just the full-length one.
- Is it free, and does anything get uploaded?
- It is free, there is no sign-up, and nothing is uploaded. The dictionary downloads to your browser the first time you unscramble something, and everything after that happens on your own device — it even works offline once the page has loaded.
- Why can it not find my word?
- Usually one of three things: it is a name (proper nouns are not in the dictionary), it is shorter than three or longer than eight letters, or the jumble has a letter in it that the answer does not. A small number of rude words are also left out, because this is a general-audience site.
More word things here
- Anagram solver — the same engine, for when you are holding a rack of tiles.
- Word lists — by length, and by the awkward letters.
- Words that start with Q — including the ones with no U.
- Anagrove — the daily word game all of this was built for.