Word unscrambler
Type the letters you have. You get every word a large English dictionary contains that can be built from them — grouped by length, longest first — with a total count and optional filters for starts-with, ends-with, contains and exact length. Use ? or * for a blank or unknown tile.
How it works
The obvious way to unscramble letters is to generate every possible ordering of them and check each one against a dictionary. That works for six or seven letters and becomes hopeless fast after that — ten letters have over three million orderings, fifteen have over a trillion. This tool does the opposite: instead of rearranging your letters, it asks a much cheaper question about every word in the dictionary in turn.
The letter-bag check
Whatever you type becomes a count of each letter — a “bag”. cattle is not a sequence to this tool, it's {a:1, c:1, e:1, l:1, t:2}. For each candidate word in the dictionary, the tool builds the same kind of count and checks one thing: does your bag contain at least as many of every letter as the word needs? If yes, the word can be built from your tiles — regardless of what order you typed them in. That single comparison is done once per word, so a search against the full ~204,000-word list is a few million simple counts, not a factorial explosion, and it finishes in well under the time it takes to see the result.
Grouping
Matches are grouped by length, longest first, and alphabetically within each length — the same order you'd want if you were scanning for the best-scoring word in a tile game, where longer usually means better, or hunting for a specific crossword answer length.
Using wildcards
? and * both mean the same thing here: a tile you don't know, or don't have. A blank tile in a physical tile game, a letter you can't read on a worn board, or a crossword square you haven't solved yet all become the same thing to this tool — a wildcard that can stand in for any single letter.
Wildcards are added to your other letters, not swapped in for them: typing c?tt?e gives the tool six tiles — c, one unknown, t, t, one unknown, e — and it correctly finds cattle among the results, using both wildcards to cover the missing a and l.
The count is capped at two. Every wildcard multiplies the number of letters the tool has to consider at that position, so a rack with many unknowns turns into a very long, mostly-useless list. Two is enough for the situations that come up in practice — a couple of blank tiles, or a couple of letters you're unsure of — while keeping the result list something you can actually scan.
Using it for word games and crosswords
Tile racks. Enter every tile you're holding, including blanks as wildcards, and the longest-first grouping surfaces your best options immediately. Add Starts with or Contains if you already know you want to build off a letter already on the board.
Crossword grids. Set Exact length to the number of squares in the answer, and use a ? for each square you haven't filled in yet — up to two unknowns at once. For longer runs of blanks, put whatever letters you do know into Starts with, Ends with or Contains and leave the rest of the pattern for context rather than trying to wildcard all of it.
Daily word puzzles. Where a puzzle gives you a fixed set of letters and asks for every valid word (not just one answer), this is exactly that kind of exhaustive search — type the letters once and read the whole word list instead of guessing one at a time.
This tool is independent and not affiliated with or endorsed by any specific game, its publisher, or its trademark holder — see the honest limitations below before relying on a result mid-game.
Worked examples
A six-letter anagram set: netsli
All six letters rearrange into several complete words at once — enlist, listen, silent and tinsel all appear in the 6-letter group — alongside dozens of shorter words like nets, lines, tins and silt built from a subset of the same tiles. This is the case a pure “anagram of the whole word” tool misses: most of what you can actually play in a tile game uses fewer than all of your letters.
Two wildcards filling real gaps: c?tt?e
Six tiles, two of them unknown. The tool finds cattle at full length, plus a long tail of shorter words such as cute, chit and tact that don't need both wildcards at all. Add Ends with: e to narrow a long result list down to words that end the way you need.
Honest limitations
- The dictionary is general English, not a game's official word list. It's a large list (roughly 204,000 lowercase entries, 2–15 letters) derived from a public-domain reference dictionary, filtered to exclude proper nouns. It was not built from, and does not match, any specific game's tournament word list — expect some mismatches in both directions.
- Obscure words will appear. A general dictionary this size contains plenty of archaic, dialectal and technical words nobody uses in conversation. That's a feature for vocabulary and crossword work and occasionally noise for a tile game.
- Two wildcards, not unlimited. Patterns with three or more unknown letters need to be narrowed with Starts with, Ends with or Contains instead of pure wildcards.
- No word longer than 15 letters. That's the ceiling of the underlying list, not a technical limit of the search itself.
- Very long result lists are capped for display. A short, common set of letters can match hundreds of words in one length group; the page shows the first batch per group with a note on how many more exist, so the page stays fast to scroll. Add a filter to see the rest.
Frequently asked questions
How does the wildcard (? or *) work?
Type ? or * in place of a letter you don't have — a blank tile, or a letter you can't read in a crossword grid. Each wildcard can stand in for any single letter, and the tool checks every dictionary word that becomes buildable once something fills that gap. Wildcards are counted on top of your other letters, not instead of them: c?t supplies three tiles (c, one unknown, t), not two.
Why is the wildcard count capped at two?
One unknown letter is already many possibilities to check at that position; a rack with several unknowns multiplies fast enough that the result list stops being useful long before it stops growing. Two wildcards covers the realistic case — a couple of blank tiles, or a couple of letters you're unsure of — without burying the words you can actually place under noise.
Can I reuse a letter more times than I typed it?
No. Each letter can appear in a result only as many times as it appears in what you typed, plus any wildcards. Typing “aa” gives the tool exactly two A tiles, so a word needing three As — “aardvark” has three — will not appear unless a wildcard covers the shortfall.
Does this match an official Scrabble or Words With Friends dictionary?
No, and this matters before you rely on it mid-game: this tool checks one general English word list of roughly 204,000 entries, not any single game's official word list. Scrabble and Words With Friends each maintain their own dictionaries, which differ from each other and from general English — some words found here won't be accepted in a specific game, and a small number of words a game accepts may not appear here. Treat results as a strong starting point, not a guaranteed-legal play.
Why don't short words show up even though I typed enough letters?
Results start at 2 letters — single letters aren't listed even when your tiles could technically spell one. If a short word you expect is missing, check that Starts with, Ends with or Contains isn't filtering it out by accident, and confirm every one of its letters is actually available in what you typed, wildcards included.
Is this useful for crossword solving, not just tile games?
Yes. Combine Exact length with a ? for each blank square: a five-letter answer with the pattern _R_S_ becomes the letters “?r?s?” with Exact length set to 5. For patterns with more than two unknown letters, put the letters you do know into Starts with, Ends with or Contains instead, since the wildcard cap is two.
Does my input ever leave my device?
No. Searching runs entirely in your browser against a word list that already loaded with the page, so there is no server call involved in a search and nothing you type is uploaded anywhere. The only network activity on this page is loading the page itself.
Why are some very obscure or archaic words showing up?
The dictionary behind this tool is a large general English word list, not a curated game word list, so it includes rare, archaic, dialectal and technical entries alongside everyday ones. That breadth is deliberate — it makes the tool useful for word games, crosswords and vocabulary exploration alike — but it also means not every result will be familiar, and not every result will be accepted by a specific game's own dictionary.
What's the longest word this can find?
15 letters, the longest word length in the underlying dictionary. If you type more usable letters than that, plus wildcards, the extra tiles simply can't be used, since nothing in the list is longer.