Puzzle Cottage / Tools / Anagram Explorer
Anagram explorer

Anagram explorer — find every English word from your letters

Educational tool for vocabulary practice. Type your letters, see every valid English word formable from them, grouped by length. Built on the public-domain ENABLE dictionary (~80,000 words). Use it to learn anagram patterns — not to cheat your way through today’s Anagram Race.

Tip: try MARBLE, STREAM, SILENT, GARDEN, FINGER. The dictionary contains 1–8 letter words.

How to use this tool

Two modes:

  • Exact-length anagrams (default) — words that use all your letters in some order. LISTEN → SILENT, ENLIST, INLETS, TINSEL.
  • Subset anagrams — uncheck the checkbox to find any word using some of your letters. Useful for word-games like Anagram Race where you find shorter words from longer letter sets.

The minimum length filter is helpful for games that exclude short words (most Anagram Race / Spelling Bee variants drop 3-letter words like ARS, ETA, EMS).

What this tool is for

Vocabulary practice. Pattern recognition. Understanding what makes some letter sets richer than others. Looking up the answers to a daily puzzle after you’ve attempted it (looking up before defeats the practice).

What this tool isn’t for

Cheating on Anagram Race or other timed word games. The whole point of those games is the mental search — using a tool removes that. Use the tool to learn patterns, then go play and apply them.

How the matching works

Letter-multiset comparison: your letters are sorted into a count of each letter, then every word in the ENABLE dictionary is tested. A word matches if its letter-counts are ≤ your letter counts (subset mode) or exactly equal (exact mode).

The matching is case-insensitive and ignores spaces. Letters are uppercased internally.

About the dictionary

Built on the public-domain ENABLE word list — same dictionary used by Scrabble software, Words With Friends, and our own word games. Contains ~80,000 English words from 1–8 letters. Words flagged as predominantly proper nouns (HARRY, JIMMY, PETER, etc.) are excluded.

Related

For strategy on solving anagrams without a tool, see how to anagram words. For the daily timed game, see Anagram Race. For the underlying word lists, see word lists hub.