How the unscrambler works
The naive approach is to generate every permutation of your letters and check each one against a dictionary. Seven letters produce 5,040 permutations, ten produce 3.6 million, and the whole thing collapses. This tool inverts the problem: instead of building words from your letters, it walks the dictionary and asks whether each word fits inside the letters you have.
The test is a letter-count comparison. Your rack becomes a tally — two Es, one S, one T — and a candidate word passes if it never needs more of a letter than you hold. Anything it is short of is charged to a blank tile, and it fails as soon as the blanks run out. That is linear in dictionary size rather than factorial in rack size, which is why results come back instantly even with fifteen letters.
Why the dictionary loads in pieces
The full English word list is over four megabytes, which is more than any page should ask you to download. But eight letters can only ever make words of eight letters or fewer, so the dictionary is split into one file per word length and only the relevant ones are fetched. A seven-letter rack downloads a few hundred kilobytes; a three-letter one downloads almost nothing. Each file is cached after the first search, so changing filters costs nothing.
Using the filters
- Contains — the answer must include this sequence somewhere. This is the one to use when a board position forces you through a letter already played.
- Starts with / ends with — for hooking onto an existing word, or when a crossword gives you the first or last letters.
- Exact length — for a crossword slot or a Wordle-style puzzle where the answer length is fixed.
- Min length — mostly to hide the two- and three-letter noise once you are hunting for a bingo.
The two scoring systems
Each result shows Scrabble points first and Words With Friends points second. They differ more than people expect, because WWF re-tuned the letter values: H drops from 4 to 3, G rises from 2 to 3, L from 1 to 2, U from 1 to 2, and J from 8 to 10. A word built on cheap consonants can be a strong Scrabble play and an unremarkable WWF one.
Neither number includes board multipliers, which is where most of the real scoring happens. Treat the points as a ranking of the words against each other, then place the highest-value letters on premium squares — that decision usually matters more than which word you pick.
Getting better rather than just getting an answer
The list is most useful after a turn rather than during one. Play your word, then check what was available. Two patterns show up quickly and are worth memorising: the short high-value words that let you dump an awkward tile (JO, ZA, QI, XU), and the vowel dumps that rescue a rack of five vowels (AUREI, AALII, OIDIA). Those are what separate a casual player from a competent one, and no amount of vocabulary substitutes for them.
Privacy
The dictionary is a static file your browser downloads; the matching runs entirely on your device. The letters you enter are never sent anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
How do I use a blank tile?
Type ? or * where the blank goes. Each one matches any single letter. The blank scores zero, and we deduct the highest-value letter it covers — which is what a player would actually do, since you place the blank on the most expensive letter you are missing.
Which dictionary is used?
English uses a 359,000-word list derived from the public-domain dwyl/english-words corpus. Portuguese uses a 259,000-word Brazilian Portuguese list. Neither is the official tournament word list of a specific game, so a small number of entries may not be accepted in TWL or SOWPODS play — check with your opponent before challenging.
Does it work with accented Portuguese words?
Yes, and you do not have to type the accents. Every word is indexed by its unaccented form, so entering 'coracao' finds 'coração'. Results are shown with correct accents.
Is this cheating?
In a tournament, yes. Outside one it is how most people learn the high-value short words and the vowel dumps that make the difference between a casual and a competent player. Looking up what was possible after a turn is a legitimate way to get better.
Why do the two point values differ?
Scrabble and Words With Friends assign different values to the same letters. In WWF an H is worth 3 instead of 4, a G is 3 instead of 2, and a J is 10 instead of 8. The same word can therefore be a strong play in one game and mediocre in the other, which is why both numbers are shown.