How this unscrambler works
Every word in the list is checked against your letters. A word qualifies when each of its letters can be covered by one of your tiles: the same letter twice in the word needs the tile twice on your rack. Blank tiles cover whatever is left over, up to the number of blanks you entered. Filters are applied first, so a word that fails Starts with, Ends with or Contains is never tested against the rack at all.
Results are grouped by length, longest first, because the longest word is usually the one worth playing. Inside each group, common words come first, ordered by how often they appear in a large collection of published English text. The common words carry a one-line meaning from Princeton WordNet, so you can check what you are about to play. The rest of each group follows under More words, sorted A to Z. The number beside a word is the sum of its tile values in the English Scrabble set. Letters a blank had to cover score zero, and board bonuses are not counted, because the tool cannot see your board.
The checking happens on your device. When you press Unscramble the first time, your browser downloads the word list files it needs, plain text files of words grouped by length, from this site. After that they are cached, and repeat searches are quick. No account, no upload of your letters, and nothing to install.
A worked example: the rack LISTEN
The letters L, I, S, T, E and N make 90 words in this list. Six of them use every letter:
| Word | Tile score | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| LISTEN | 6 | To pay attention to a sound |
| SILENT | 6 | Making no sound; quiet |
| ENLIST | 6 | To join the armed forces, or to get help or support |
| TINSEL | 6 | Thin strips of shiny material used as decoration |
| INLETS | 6 | Narrow strips of water reaching into the land |
| ELINTS | 6 | Intelligence gathered from electronic signals (a plural noun) |
Below the anagrams there are 16 words of five letters (INLET, ISLET and TILES among them), 32 of four letters, 25 of three, and 11 of two, including IN, IS, IT and EL. Ninety words from six tiles is why this rack is famous. Most racks give fewer, and the shorter groups are where the playable points usually hide once the board fills up.
About the word list
The list is ENABLE, a public domain English word list of 172,823 words, widely used by word game software because it can be shared freely. It is not a tournament dictionary. The official Scrabble lists, the NASPA Word List in North America and Collins Scrabble Words elsewhere, are copyrighted, and this site does not use them or claim that its results match them.
Two gaps are worth knowing about before you rely on the results. ENABLE was put together before some recent additions to the tournament lists, so QI and ZA are not in it. A handful of other words differ between lists too. In a friendly game, agree on one list before you start. In a tournament, the official list for your region decides. The full method, including where the frequency order and the meanings come from, is written out on How We Verify.
Questions
How do blank tiles work?
Type a question mark for each blank tile, up to three. A blank can stand for any letter. The unscrambler uses your real letters first, and any letter a blank had to cover scores zero points.
Why is a word I expected missing from the results?
Every word game uses its own word list, and this tool uses the ENABLE list. A few words from other lists are not in ENABLE. The best known examples are QI and ZA, which ENABLE predates. If your game uses a different list, your results can differ by a few words.
Are the words here valid in Scrabble?
Not officially. ENABLE is a public domain list, not the NASPA Word List or Collins Scrabble Words used in tournaments, and LearnWordly does not claim tournament validity for any result. For a friendly game, agree on one list before you start. For a tournament, check the official list for your region.
Is what I type stored or sent anywhere?
No. The unscrambler runs in your browser. The word list files are downloaded once from this site, and the letters you type never leave your device.
What does the number next to each word mean?
It is the sum of the English Scrabble tile values of the word's letters. Board bonuses such as double or triple letter squares are not included, because the tool cannot see your board. A letter covered by a blank tile scores zero.
More word tools
Sources
- Word list: ENABLE (public domain), the file the tools on this site load: github.com/brokensandals/wordlists
- Meanings: Princeton WordNet
- Frequency order: Peter Norvig's word counts, from Google Books n-gram data
- How the list and the meanings are checked: How We Verify