ABCcount

Word Unscrambler

Type your scrambled letters and see every valid word you can make — checked against a real 57,000-word English dictionary, entirely in your browser.

0 letters

Loading dictionary…

Every word your letters can make, and nothing that isn't a word

Type your letters above and the unscrambler returns every valid word they can form, sorted by length. It checks against a 57,000-word dictionary rather than generating plausible-looking letter strings — so if a word appears here, it is a word.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A generator that permutes letters will happily hand you retni and inert in the same list, and you will not know which is which until somebody challenges you.

The two-letter words

More games are won on these than on any seven-letter bingo. They let you play parallel to an existing word and score every letter twice, and they get you out of a rack with no vowels. Most players know about fifteen of them. There are more than a hundred.

Aaa ab ad ae ag ah ai al am an ar as at aw ax ay
Bba be bi bo by
Dda de do
Eed ef eh el em en er es et ew ex
Ffa fe
Ggi go
Hha he hi hm ho
Iid if in is it
Jjo
Kka ki
Lla li lo
Mma me mi mm mo mu my
Nna ne no nu
Ood oe of oh oi om on op or os ow ox oy
Ppa pe pi po
Qqi
Rre
Ssh si so
Tta te ti to
Uuh um un up us ut
Wwe wo
Xxi xu
Yya ye yo
Zza

Dictionaries differ. This follows the North American tournament word list; the international list adds a handful more, including ch, ee, oo and ya variants. If you are playing casually, agree which dictionary you are using before somebody plays za and an argument starts.

Q without U

A Q with no U is the most common reason a rack stalls. It is worth ten points and it is worth nothing at all if you cannot place it. There are six words worth memorising, and the first one will rescue you more often than the other five combined.

qi
The single most useful word in the game. Life force, in Chinese philosophy.
qat
A shrub whose leaves are chewed as a stimulant. Also spelled khat.
qaid
A North African chief or judge.
qanat
An underground irrigation channel.
qoph
The nineteenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
qwerty
The standard keyboard layout. Valid in several dictionaries.

The counter-intuitive one

Holding the high tiles is usually a mistake. A J, Q, X or Z sitting on your rack for three turns has cost you three turns of flexibility, and the eight points you eventually score with it rarely make that back.

Strong players dump them early and cheaply. Za, jo, xi and qi exist precisely so you can.

“But that's definitely a word”

Four reasons a word you know is real does not come back:

It is a proper noun

Names of people, places and brands are excluded from every standard word list. Paris is not playable; plaster is.

It is hyphenated or two words

Well-known and ice cream are both excluded. The dictionary holds single unhyphenated words only.

It is newer than the dictionary

Word lists are revised every few years. Recent coinages take a while to arrive, and some never do.

It is British and you are on the American list

Or the reverse. The two lists diverge by several thousand words, which is why a game between a British and an American player should start with a conversation.

Not only for board games

Crossword solving

Anagram clues are a crossword staple, and the wordplay usually tells you the letters without telling you the order. Feed them in and the answer is often the only word long enough to fit.

Wordle and its relatives

Once you have four confirmed letters in unknown positions, this gives you the shortlist rather than the guess.

Naming things

Anagramming a founder's name or a product word is a long-standing way to find something short and unclaimed.

Teaching spelling

Scrambled letters are a standard exercise, and this checks the answer sheet faster than doing it by hand.

If you want the longer version — how scrambling works, why a two-dictionary split matters, and how to build puzzles rather than solve them — that is in the word scrambler guide. For counting rather than unscrambling, the word counter is the other half of this site.

More free tools

Everything here runs in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded anywhere.

See everything ABCcount does

Advertisement — go ad-free with ABCcount Pro