Word Unscrambler

Enter the letters you have — like your Scrabble or Wordle tiles — and find every word you can make from them, grouped by length with Scrabble points and meanings. Use ? for a blank tile.

How to use the word unscrambler

Type the letters you are holding — in Scrabble or Words With Friends that is your rack, in a crossword it is the letters you already have, in an anagram puzzle it is the scrambled word itself. The tool searches a full English game lexicon and returns every valid word that can be built from those letters, longest first, so the highest-scoring plays are at the top.

You do not have to use every letter. RETAINS contains seven tiles, but the results include two-letter words, three-letter words and everything in between — which is usually where a tight board actually gets played.

Blank tiles

Type ? for each blank. A blank stands for any letter, so RETAIN? searches every word that can be made from those six letters plus one free one. Two blanks means two ? characters. Blanks widen the search a lot, so expect noticeably more results — and remember that in Scrabble a blank scores zero points, which the points column here does not know about.

Narrowing the search

The three smaller boxes filter the results, and they matter more than they look:

• Starts with — for hooking onto a letter already on the board, or for a crossword answer whose first letter you know.
• Contains — for playing through a letter in the middle of an existing word.
• Ends with — for building onto a word's final letter, and for Wordle-style deduction.

Combine them freely. Letters RETAINS with ends with ing answers a very different question from the bare rack.

Which game are you playing?

Scrabble and Words With Friends. Sort by the points column rather than by length — a short word on a triple-letter square regularly beats a longer word on plain tiles. The two-letter words are worth learning by heart; they are what turns a blocked board into a playable one.

Wordle. Put the letters you have confirmed into contains, then read the five-letter group. If you know a position, starts with or ends with narrows it further. The full list of five-letter words is the companion page for this.

Crosswords. Use the length groups. If you know the answer is seven letters and begins with S, the seven-letter group plus starts with s is usually a short enough list to eyeball.

Anagrams. Type the scrambled word itself. Any result the same length as your input is a true anagram of it — everything shorter is a partial.

How the points are calculated

The points column uses standard English Scrabble tile values: one point for A, E, I, O, U, L, N, S, T and R; two for D and G; three for B, C, M and P; four for F, H, V, W and Y; five for K; eight for J and X; ten for Q and Z. It is the face value of the letters only — board multipliers, the fifty-point bonus for using all seven tiles, and the zero value of a blank are not included, because those depend on where you play the word rather than on the word itself.

For English learners

An unscrambler is a surprisingly good vocabulary exercise. Working out which words hide inside a set of letters forces you to notice English spelling patterns — the common endings, which letter pairs actually occur, and how a root changes as it takes a suffix. Where a result exists in our spelling dictionary we show a synonym beside it, so an unfamiliar word comes with a hint rather than sending you elsewhere.

If you are studying patterns rather than playing a game, the word lists are a better starting point: words ending in -tion, ending in -ing, or grouped by length. And if you want to check a sentence rather than a word, there is a spelling and grammar checker.

Questions

Why does a word I know not appear? The lexicon covers standard English words as used by word games; it deliberately excludes proper nouns, abbreviations and acronyms, so names of people and places will not show up. Very new slang may also be missing.

Why do some results look obscure? Because they are valid and playable. Rare short words are exactly what experienced players come for — they are often the difference between a blocked rack and a scoring turn.

Is there a minimum? Two letters. One letter has no meaningful answer, so the tool asks for at least two.

Does it work without JavaScript? Yes. Submitting the form returns a fully rendered page of results; JavaScript only adds the live search as you type.

Popular word lists

3-letter words 4-letter words 5-letter words

-tion words -ing words -ed words -ly words -ness words -able words