Anagram Solver

About the anagram solver

An anagram is a rearrangement of all (or some) of the letters in a word to form another valid word. This tool takes the letters you supply, generates every possible subset combination of those letters, and looks each one up in a curated English dictionary index. Results are grouped by length, sorted longest-first, and capped at a configurable minimum so you do not have to scroll through hundreds of two-letter fillers.

It is the kind of tool that pays off in word games (Scrabble, Words With Friends, Bananagrams), in crossword construction, in cryptic-clue checking, and as a memory aid for writers searching for a punchy short word that uses an awkward set of tiles. Because the dictionary lookup runs in your browser, you can solve dozens of racks in a row without waiting on a network.

How it works

The solver pre-indexes a dictionary by sorted-letter signature. Two words are anagrams of each other if and only if their letters in sorted order are identical, so the algorithm reduces to a constant-time lookup once the index is built.

Index build (once):
  for each dictionary word w:
    key = sorted(letters(w))
    bucket[key].append(w)

Solve (per query):
  for each subset S of input letters of length L >= min:
    key = sorted(S)
    if key in bucket: emit bucket[key]

Complexity:
  C(n, L) subsets where n = input length, L = subset size.
  For 7 input letters this is at most 127 candidate keys.

• Input letters: A to Z only; the tool strips digits, spaces, punctuation.
• Min length: 2 to 10 inclusive. Most Scrabble-style games use 2 as the floor.
• Dictionary: a curated subset of standard English (roughly 1,000 high-frequency 3 to 5 letter words). It is not the full Collins or TWL list.
• Wildcards: not currently supported. Enter the literal letters you have.

Worked example

You have the letters LISTEN and want every valid word of length 3 or more.

1. Input: L I S T E N, minimum length 3.
2. Generate subsets of length 3, 4, 5, 6. Total = C(6,3) + C(6,4) + C(6,5) + C(6,6) = 20 + 15 + 6 + 1 = 42 candidate keys.
3. Sort each subset: e.g. {L,I,S,T,E,N} becomes "EILNST".
4. Look up each sorted key in the dictionary bucket map.
5. Hits found: 6-letter LISTEN, ENLIST, INLETS, SILENT, TINSEL; 5-letter INLET; 4-letter LENS, LINE, LIST, NEST, SENT, TENS, TIES, TILE, TINE; many 3-letter (LIE, LIT, NET, NIL, NIT, SET, SIN, SIT, TEN, TIE, TIN).
6. Sort output: longest first, then alphabetical.

Common word-game tile values

Anagram lookups are most valuable when you pair them with the underlying game's letter values. Here are the standard Scrabble English distribution and points.

Common pitfalls

• Confusing anagrams with subsets. A strict anagram uses ALL the letters of the source word. This tool finds anagrams of any subset, which is what Scrabble players actually want. If you need only true full-rack anagrams, set minimum length equal to your input length.
• Forgetting wildcards. Scrabble blanks count as any letter. The solver does not accept blanks, so run multiple queries swapping the blank for each likely letter.
• Dictionary mismatch. This dictionary is broad but does not include obscure Scrabble-only words like QI, ZA, AA, or the full Collins Scrabble Words list. Verify questionable plays in the official word list for your game.
• Missing plurals. Many useful plurals (CATS, DOGS) are present; some inflected forms may be absent.
• Case and accents. The solver normalises to upper-case ASCII A to Z. Accented letters and apostrophes are stripped before lookup.

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Frequently asked questions