How to use it
- Type your letters in Letters. Write ? for a letter you do not know, as in c?t.
- Leave Use on All letters to find anagrams, or choose Some letters to find shorter words as well.
- With Some letters, set Shortest word to the fewest letters you want in a word.
- Read Words found for the count, and the table for the words, the longest first.
How the search works
The search checks each word of the word list against your letters. A word fits when the letters it needs, beyond the letters you gave, can be filled by the ? characters.
- All letters: the word uses every letter you gave, so it has as many letters as you gave.
- Some letters: the word uses some of your letters and any ? characters, and it is at least as long as the shortest word you set.
- Capitals are not counted separately: A and a are the same letter. Spaces and other characters are left out and listed under Ignored characters.
The word list
The list is the English word list of SCOWL (Spell Checker Oriented Word Lists, now the English Speller Database), size 60: the American and the British (-ise) spellings of the Hunspell release 2026.02.25, joined. It has 81,979 words, all written with the letters a to z in lower case, sorted, with no repeats. It holds inflected forms too, such as listens and walked. It is a list for word games and spell checkers: it gives no meanings, and a word on it is not a claim about how often it is used.
The list is loaded when the page needs it, and the search runs in your browser.
Why the list is capped
A few letters with several ? characters can fit thousands of words. The table lists at most 500 words, the longest groups first, while the count above it gives the number of all the words that fit.
Worked example: listen
The letters l, i, s, t, e and n, with All letters, fit five six-letter words of the list: enlist, inlets, listen, silent and tinsel. Each uses all six letters, so they make one group of six letters and the count is 5.
| Letters | Words | Words |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | 5 | enlist, inlets, listen, silent, tinsel |
Frequently asked questions
What is an anagram?
An anagram is a word or phrase made by rearranging the letters of another. The solver lists the words of the list that use all the letters you give, so listen and silent are anagrams of each other.
What does the ? mean?
A ? stands for any one letter. Use it for a letter you do not know: c?t finds three-letter words made of a c, a t and one more letter, such as cat, cot and cut, and also words such as tic, where the c is not first.
Why is a word I know not in the results?
The list is the SCOWL size 60 word list, and a word that is not on it is not found. Every word on it is written in lower case with the letters a to z only, so capitalised names, a word with an apostrophe, a hyphen or a digit, and an abbreviation with a dot are not found. The list does not include every word in use.
Why are only 500 words listed?
A few letters with several ? characters can fit tens of thousands of words, which a page cannot show well. The count gives the number of all the words that fit, and the first 500 are listed, the longest first.
Does my text leave my device?
No. The search runs in your browser. Nothing you type is stored or sent to our server.
Sources
- SCOWL word lists: en_US and en_GB-ise size 60, Hunspell release 2026.02.25. Copyright 2000-2026 by Kevin Atkinson; permission to use, copy, modify, distribute and sell word lists created from SCOWL is granted without fee, provided the copyright notice appears in all copies
- SCOWL (English Speller Database): the Copyright file with the full notice
Figures and text last checked on Tuesday, November 10, 2026.