Unscramble any set of letters into every valid English word. Grouped by length, sorted your way. Built for Scrabble, Wordle, and every word game in between.
Type up to 15 letters then press Enter or click Search. Use ? for blank tiles or wildcards - for example, entering CAT? will find words like CATS, CHAT, COAT, and CART.
The engine sorts both your letters and each dictionary entry alphabetically, then checks whether the dictionary word's letters are a subset of your available pool. Wildcard tiles (?) fill any letter gap.
Deep strategies, clear explanations, and expert techniques for competitive word game players.
Word unscramblers are fundamentally about two things: a comprehensive reference list of valid English words (called a dictionary array - a simple collection of words stored in computer memory), and a fast algorithm for deciding which of those words can be formed from your specific set of letters. Rather than testing every possible ordering of your letters (a process called brute-force permutation, which becomes impossibly slow beyond about 8 letters), this tool uses a sorting-based comparison. Every word in the dictionary is stored in a pre-sorted form alongside its original spelling. When you enter your letters, the engine sorts your input the same way and then checks, letter by letter, whether each pre-sorted dictionary word is a subset of your sorted pool. Because comparing two sorted lists is extremely fast, the entire dictionary of tens of thousands of words can be scanned in a fraction of a second.
The difference between an anagram and a permutation is often confused, even by experienced word game players. A permutation is any possible ordered arrangement of a set of items - if you have the letters A, C, and T, the permutations include ACT, ATC, CAT, CTA, TAC, and TCA. Most permutations are not real words. An anagram is a specific permutation that happens to form a valid word - so ACT, CAT, and TAC (British English) are all anagrams of each other. When this tool unscrambles your letters, it is finding all valid anagrams of subsets of your letter pool: not just full rearrangements, but shorter words that can be formed from any portion of your available tiles. This is why a 7-letter input might return dozens of results from 2 to 7 letters long.
Wildcard tiles - represented here by the question mark character (?) - are one of the most powerful and most misunderstood elements in competitive Scrabble. In official Scrabble rules, a blank tile scores zero points but can represent any letter of the alphabet. The unscrambling strategy changes significantly when you hold a blank. Without a blank, your options are strictly limited to words formable from your exact letters. With one blank, every dictionary word up to one letter longer than your non-blank count becomes a candidate, provided those letters appear in your rack. With two blanks, the possibilities expand even further. This tool handles wildcards by tracking how many question marks you entered and allowing that many letter substitutions during the subset-matching step. The wildcard letters are not shown in a special color in the results, because any of the result words could use the blank in multiple positions - your strategic awareness determines which placement scores highest on the board.
Filtering results by minimum word length is not simply a matter of convenience - it is a core competitive technique. In Scrabble, playing all 7 tiles in a single turn (called a bingo) earns a 50-point bonus, so advanced players scan the longest results first. In Wordle, the answer is always exactly 5 letters, so filtering to exactly 5-letter words eliminates noise and lets you focus. Even in casual word games, shorter words like two-letter combinations (QI, ZA, AA, OX) are tactically valuable for parallel plays or clearing difficult tiles. The minimum length filter in this tool lets you dial your results to exactly the word-length strategy your current game situation demands. Start with the longest results when you need maximum points, and lower the filter when you need to offload a difficult tile combination.
Regular Expressions (often abbreviated as Regex) are a pattern-matching language used inside software to find, test, and manipulate text. While this tool does not require you to know any Regex to use it, the underlying matching logic is conceptually similar - it defines rules about which character sequences count as valid matches. Understanding that the tool uses rule-based pattern logic (rather than a simple word list search) helps explain why it is both fast and accurate. The dictionary embedded in this page is a curated list of standard English words drawn from common competitive word game references. Because all lookups happen entirely within your web browser using JavaScript, your inputs never leave your device - there is no server call, no data logging, and no network delay.
A permutation is any possible ordered arrangement of a set of letters. For three letters A, C, T there are 6 permutations: ACT, ATC, CAT, CTA, TAC, TCA. Most permutations produce nonsense strings, not real words.
An anagram is the special subset of permutations that form a valid dictionary word. ACT and CAT are both anagrams - real, playable words - while ATC and CTA are merely permutations with no word value.
This tool efficiently finds all anagrams of your letters (and their subsets) by comparing sorted letter fingerprints against a full dictionary, skipping the millions of invalid permutations entirely.
The engine uses a technique called sorted-signature matching. Every word in the embedded dictionary is stored alongside a version of itself with its letters sorted alphabetically. For example, CRANE becomes ACENR. When you enter letters, they are sorted the same way.
The algorithm then scans every entry in the dictionary and asks: can this word's letters be formed from your sorted pool? It does this by checking, letter by letter, that the word does not need more of any given letter than you have available. This single-pass scan is far more efficient than generating all permutations of your input.
Wildcard tiles (?) are handled by counting how many blanks you supplied and using them to fill in any letters the target word needs that your non-blank pool does not contain.
In competitive Scrabble, blank tiles are considered the most valuable tiles in the game - worth keeping even though they score zero points - because they dramatically expand your playable word options. Expert players often hold a blank rather than play it on a low-scoring word, waiting for a high-value opportunity such as a bingo (using all 7 tiles for a 50-point bonus).
When using this tool with a wildcard, pay attention to what letter the blank would need to represent in each result word. The best plays are usually those where the blank represents a common, low-point-value letter (like E, A, or I) while your high-value scored tiles (like Q, Z, or J) land on premium squares.
With two wildcards in your rack, the results expand enormously. In competitive play this is the signal to search aggressively for 7-letter bingos that use both blanks alongside your remaining tiles.
Different word games reward different word lengths, so filtering intelligently is a core skill:
Scrabble / Words With Friends: Prioritize 7-letter words (bingo territory) first, then 6-letter words. Two-letter words are also essential for parallel plays. Filter to 2+ letters for full flexibility or 7 letters only when hunting the bingo bonus.
Wordle: Filter to exactly 5 letters. Every other length is irrelevant, and removing the clutter helps you focus purely on 5-letter candidates that match your current game constraints.
Spelling Bee (NYT): You need words of 4 letters or more that include the center letter. Filter to 4+ letters and then manually check for the required center letter in each result.
Boggle / Bananagrams: Shorter words (3-4 letters) are often just as valuable as long ones for clearing tiles quickly. Set the minimum to 3 for a broad set of options.
This tool uses a curated embedded dictionary of common English words covering standard usage as well as words recognized in popular word games. The dictionary is stored as a JavaScript array directly inside the page, which means lookups are instantaneous and fully offline - no server is involved at any step.
Because the dictionary is embedded for speed and privacy, it is not identical to the official TWL (Tournament Word List) or SOWPODS lists used in competitive Scrabble. Some rare or very recently added competitive words may not appear, and some informal words that are not in competition dictionaries may be included. For serious tournament play, always verify your words against the current official word list for your competition format.
The tool will never show you a false positive (a string of letters that is not a real English word), but it may occasionally omit an obscure valid word that is in the official competition list. This makes it a reliable aid for casual, educational, and recreational word game play.