Anagram helper

Type the letters you're trying to unscramble and they land below as tiles. Drag them around, spread them into a circle, or roll them like dice to see the letters afresh — the same tricks solvers use with pen and paper. No dictionary, no spoilers: the answer is yours to find.

How to use the anagram helper

• Add your letters. Type the scrambled word or phrase — only the letters count, so "dirty room" becomes nine tiles.
• Roll scatters the tiles to fresh random spots, like tipping Scrabble tiles out of the bag again. A new arrangement often makes a word jump out.
• Circle arranges the letters in a ring. Solvers have used this trick for decades: a circle has no beginning or end, so your eye stops reading the letters in their scrambled order.
• Sort A–Z lines the letters up alphabetically — the classic first move on paper, because alphabetical order breaks the scrambled word's spell.
• Vowels · Consonants groups the vowels and consonants separately, so you can see how many vowels there are to go around.
• Drag tiles around freely to try out beginnings, endings and letter pairs — or drag one into the tray below the bench to set it aside, the digital version of crossing a letter out. Tap it there to bring it back.
• Answer pattern (optional): enter the answer's shape — 5,6 for two words, 4-2 for a hyphenated one — and drag tiles onto the slots as you place each letter. Tap a filled slot to send its letter back.
• Know some letters already? Tap any slot and type — crossing letters you've pinned show solid and stay put.
• Fit deals your remaining letters into the empty slots at random, around whatever you've pinned or placed. Tap it again for a fresh deal — each one is a new candidate word to read.

How to unscramble an anagram by hand

A few habits make anagrams fall much faster, whichever way the tiles are lying:

• Look for common endings. If the letters include I-N-G, E-D, E-R, T-I-O-N or L-Y, park them at the end and rearrange what's left.
• Pair up consonants that like each other. TH, CH, ST, PR — likely letter pairs shrink the puzzle.
• Count the vowels. Few vowels suggest consonant clusters; lots of vowels suggest longer, softer words.
• Don't stare at the same order. This is what Roll and Circle are for — the scrambled order primes your brain to keep reading the same non-word, and breaking that order is half the battle.

Is this an anagram solver?

Deliberately not. An anagram solver looks your letters up in a dictionary and hands you the answer; this helper gives you the workbench and lets you find it. That matters if you're solving a crossword you actually want to finish yourself, playing a word game where outside help would spoil it, or training your eye to see anagrams faster. If you genuinely just need the answer, a dictionary-backed solver is the right tool — but you won't get better at spotting anagrams by using one.

Anagrams in cryptic crosswords

The anagram is the most common device in cryptic crosswords: the clue hands you the exact letters of the answer, jumbled, next to an indicator word meaning "mixed up". Our guide to anagram clues shows how to spot the indicator and the fodder, with worked examples. And if you'd like to put it into practice, this same helper is built into Decryptic's free daily cryptic crossword — tap the anagram button on any clue and pull its words straight onto the tiles.