How to Solve Anagrams Quickly (With Examples)

An anagram is a puzzle where words (or random strings of letters) are formed by rearranging the letters of other words. Solving them is a great mental workout, and it’s fun, too! In this article, we spoke to crossword puzzle experts to bring you the best tips for solving anagrams by reorganizing them, alphabetizing them, and more. We’ve also got plenty of anagram examples to help you study up and get faster at solving them!

How do you solve an anagram?

Crossword puzzle expert Ada Nicolle recommends looking for prefixes and suffixes in the anagram that could start or end new words. These could include -ing, re-/-er, -ed, and so on. Look for other common pairings, like “th” or vowel combos like “ou” or “ea.” Rearrange or alphabetize the letters to see new patterns.

Section 1 of 5:

Reorganizing the Anagram

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Break up the anagram. First, write down all of the letters in a different pattern. You may not be able to find a new phrase or word if you’re staring at the same one that’s already in front of you, so feel free to move the letters around. They’re already in a jumbled mess, but reorganizing them into a recognizable pattern or shape will help!
- Draw a shape and write the letters around it. This makes it easier for your eye to pick up combinations since there’s no order to the letters—they’re each equally important.
- Lots of people prefer to use a circle. You can spin your paper or notebook any which way to get a new perspective.
- Constantly rearranging your letters is important because it gives your mind new ways to look at various groupings of the same letters. Sometimes you need a fresh viewpoint if you’ve been staring at the same thing for some time.
Meet the wikiHow Experts

Ada Nicolle is a crossword constructor specializing in themeless, pop culture crossword puzzles that reflect modern trends and Gen Z culture.

A.J. Jacobs is a crossword puzzle expert and author of The Puzzler, which details his project to solve the most complicated puzzles that exist, including word-based puzzles.

Adrienne Raphel is a crossword puzzle expert and author of author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them.
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Put letters together in common pairings. After you break up the anagram, start putting together pairs of letters. For example, you may notice that you have an “H” and that it normally follows a consonant like “P” or “S” to make words that contain “PH” or “SH.”^{[1]
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- In addition, “H” is usually found after “P,” “S,” “T,” “W,” and “G” unless it’s at the beginning of a word.
- Unusual letter pairings like “QU” or common ones like “TH” are easy to build words from.
- Once you start isolating smaller pairings, you have fewer letters to unscramble.
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Separate vowels and consonants. Write out all of the consonants from your anagram in one column and the vowels in a separate one. Start with the consonants and write out each different way that they can be ordered. Then, insert the vowels into each combination to see how many new words you can make.^{[2]
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- If you have a lot of vowels, first find the consonant pairs, since there are fewer variations to be had.
- Also, if you have mostly consonants, pair the vowels that can go together. For example, “IE,” “EA,” or “OU.”
- Triple vowel combos like “beautiful” or “silhouette” are rare, but taking the time to memorize them will help you solve anagrams faster. ^{[3]
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Pick out prefixes and suffixes. “I think that's my biggest piece of advice,” Nicolle says. “If there’s ‘ing’ found within the word, there's a good chance that it's a word ending with ‘-ing.’ If there's ‘re’ in a word, that could be the prefix ‘re-’ or the suffix ‘-er.’ Same with ‘de,’ which could be ‘-ed’ at the end of a word. Just pay attention to letters that could make common suffixes, and that might help you narrow down what the word might be.”^{[4]
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- Some common prefixes include: un-, dis-, sub-, re-, de-, in-, ab-, ad-, and ex-.
- Suffixes you may find could be: -ing, -ness, -ly, -ed, -er, -ry, -ous, -ment, and -tion.
- Switch around pre- and suffixes to create more word options. For example, “paint-er” can become “re-paint” by using the same letters in a new way.

Section 2 of 5:

Alphabetizing the Letters

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Separate all the letters and put them in alphabetical order. Take out a new sheet of paper and rewrite the anagram at the top of the paper (keep the original anagram handy for reference). Then, start with the first letter you have that’s closest to “A” and rewrite all of the remaining letters after it in the order that they appear in the alphabet.
- This will help you see what kinds of letters you have or isolate an abundance of vowels or any rare letters like “Q”s or “Z”s.
- Some letters may repeat, but you should still write down any duplicates. Remember, you need to use every letter that exists in the original anagram.
Just by rearranging an anagram into a jumbled yet ordered list, you can begin to see prefixes, suffixes, or even small, simple words. Once the letters are in an organized set, you can also begin to memorize the combinations since alphabetizing is a consistent method of organizing any grouping of letters.

Section 3 of 5:

Memorizing Letter Combinations

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Organize the letters based on a chosen pattern. Take an anagram and reorganize it. Use a standard such as alphabetizing to create a “base set” of letters from the anagram. Alphabetizing an anagram makes a base set of letters because, regardless of how the letters are scrambled, they can always be put back in the same order based on that “A-Z” standard.
- Another way to organize your letters could be to list all vowels followed by consonants or vice versa. Use any pattern that makes sense to you!
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Solve as many anagrams as possible based on your base set. You can have anagrams that appear to be different, but if you alphabetize “drife” and “ifred,” you get “defir” as a base set for both. From the base set of letters “defir,” you can create “fried” and “fired.” Memorize the alphabetized base sets and the different words you can make from them.
- If you play word games like Scrabble or Words With Friends, then you might see familiar combinations of letters over time.
- Memorizing anagram combinations will train you to see patterns in random letter combinations. It will help you solve crossword puzzles or word games faster.
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Revisit the same anagrams often. You want to be able to recognize basic combinations of letters anywhere. Make flashcards or reread your notebook full of anagrams to commit to memory the ones you've solved. Practice often to get into the habit of unscrambling anagrams so that you become more efficient at solving them in the future.
- Crossword puzzle expert A.J. Jacobs adds, “Just keep practicing and don’t get discouraged! Puzzles are about creative thinking and perseverance. Take breaks when needed, and remember that the answer is often hidden in plain sight. Keep pushing yourself, and you’ll get better with time.”^{[5]
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- You can buy a book of anagrams for more practice. They’re usually available at your local bookstore or online.^{[6]
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Section 4 of 5:

More Anagram Solving Tips

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Let your mind wander instead of forcing an idea. “Allow your brain to kind of dissociate from the very first thing that it wants to do and move on to the second and third and fourth things that it doesn't quite realize are there,” advises crossword puzzle expert Adrienne Raphel. “If you feel like you’re getting stuck or you’re like, ‘What's happening here?’, just pause for a second and say, ‘Wait a second, what are all the other things that this word can do?’”^{[7]
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- Simply take a short break to clear your mind, try meditating, or do a totally different activity you can get lost in, and see if the answer comes to you!
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Expand your vocabulary. The more words you know, the more words you can find scrambled within an anagram! Playing word puzzles like anagrams is already a great way to learn more words, but there are lots of other easy things you can do too, including:^{[8]
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- Read more books to see new words in context, and write down any new ones you learn in a vocabulary journal.
- Watch movies, TV shows, and listen to podcasts and audiobooks to expose yourself to new words, phrases, and expressions.
- Use flashcards to memorize the meanings of new words.
- Keep a handy dictionary and thesaurus on hand to navigate new words right away (or look them up online).
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Create your own anagrams. Making your own word puzzles lets you explore anagrams from a whole new perspective. Start by jumbling up short words to see all of the different ways you can rearrange the letters, then move on to longer and more complex words and phrases. Eventually, you’ll get a feel for how anagram generators make puzzles.
- Try wikiHow’s anagram generator to get started!
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Use an online anagram solver when you’re truly stumped. It happens to the best of us! If you just can’t guess an anagram, type it into an online anagram solver to see all of the possible answers. Then, you can work backwards to see how the answer relates to the original puzzle. (You’ll probably wonder how you possibly could have missed it once you know the answer!)

Section 5 of 5:

Anagram Examples

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Simple anagrams Most often, anagrams of simple or single words create a new, random word unrelated to the original. They’re fun, but don’t usually have a deeper meaning.^{[9]
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- ANGEL → GLEAN
- NIGHT → THING
- PLAYERS → PARSLEY
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Creative anagrams These anagrams begin with longer words or multi-word phrases that are rearranged to state something clever or relevant to the original word.^{[10]
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- DEBIT CARD → BAD CREDIT
- CONVERSATION → VOICES RANT ON
- VACATION TIME → I AM NOT ACTIVE
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Famous anagrams from pop culture, film, and literature Anagrams aren’t just for play! They appear in lots of films and literature to give deeper meaning to character or place names, and some artists may even rearrange letters in their own name to make something new.^{[11]
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- WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE → I’LL MAKE A WISE PHRASE
- In Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, Gulliver visits Tribnia and Langden:
  - TRIBNIA → BRITAIN
  - LANGDEN → ENGLAND
- In Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, clues left behind by a murdered museum curator include:
  - O, DRACONIAN DEVIL → LEONARDO DA VINCI
  - OH, LAME SAINT → THE MONA LISA
  - SO DARK THE CON OF MAN → MADONNA OF THE ROCKS

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What is the opposite of an anagram?

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Community Answer

A kangaroo word, a word that contains other words within it without rearranging letters (but being able to ignore letters). For example, encourage contains the words courage, age, cur, enrage, etc.

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What is an anagram of "raced"?

Donagan

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CARED, CEDAR, and ARCED. (The latter is one spelling of the past-tense of "arc.")

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Where did the word anagram stem from?

Donagan

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"Ana" (or "backwards") + "gram" (or "letter").

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You can explore new anagrams and expand your knowledge by using foreign languages.

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Hold on to your notebook or notes so that you can reference them in the future.

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