Pocket Ninja Journal
How to Make Words From Letters: 5 Steps for Any Jumble
· 6 min read
Short answer: stop moving all the letters at once. Take a likely ending off first, pair the letters that usually travel together, then find a short word and add one letter at a time. With P L A N E T S that walk goes PAN, PLAN, PLANT, PLANET and finally PLANETS, all seven letters.
What making words from letters means
You have a handful of letters and want to know what words are in them. Usually the letters come from a game: a rack of tiles, a grid you trace through, a crossword clue that gives you the letters scrambled, or a school worksheet. Rearranging all of them into one word is an anagram; finding shorter words inside them is what most word games ask for, and the same method does both.
The method below works by hand, without a solver. It is slower than typing the letters into a website the first time, and quicker every time after, because you start to see the endings and pairs before you look for them.
Five steps that work on any set of letters
- Split the vowels from the consonants. Write the vowels on one side and the consonants on the other. Two vowels in seven letters means the words will lean on consonant clusters; four or five means vowel pairs like EA, OU and AI are worth trying.
- Take the ending off first. Look for an ending before a word: -S, -ED, -ER, -ING, -EST, -LY. An ending uses up letters and leaves a smaller puzzle, and most long words in a jumble are a short word with an ending on it.
- Pair the letters that travel together. ST, TR, PL, CH, SH, TH, NT and ND start or end a great many English words, and a Q almost always wants a U. Put those pairs side by side and see what grows around them.
- Build short, then extend. Find a three-letter word you are sure of and add one letter at a time: PAN, PLAN, PLANT, PLANET, PLANETS. Each step is a small search, and the last one is the word you were looking for.
- Move the letters around. Write the letters in a circle, or on scraps of paper you can shuffle. Your eye keeps reading the order it was given; a new order breaks that. It is why tile-game players shuffle their racks.
A worked example: P L A N E T S
Seven letters, and only two of them vowels: A and E. That says straight away that the words will lean on consonant pairs, and three of them are sitting there: PL, NT and ST. There is an S, so plurals are on the table; there is no D, so -ED is not.
Start short. PAN is easy. Put the L in and it is PLAN, put the T on the end and it is PLANT, with the S it is PLANTS. Go back to PLANT, slip the E in, and you have PLANET; the S makes it PLANETS, all seven letters. The same trick works on PETAL and PLATE: each takes an S, and STAPLE and PASTEL are those same six letters in another order.
| Letters | Some of the words in P L A N E T S |
|---|---|
| 3 | ANT, LAP, NET, PAN, PEN, SAT, TEN |
| 4 | LEAP, NEST, PLAN, SALT, SLAP, TAPE |
| 5 | LEAST, PASTE, PETAL, PLANT, PLATE, SLANT, SPENT, STEAL |
| 6 | PANELS, PASTEL, PETALS, PLANES, PLANET, PLANTS, PLATES, STAPLE |
| 7 | PLANETS |
Wordfly’s American English word list accepts 212 words of three letters or more from these seven letters, and its British list 178. You will not need all of them. The point of the method is to reach the long ones, because in almost every word game a long word is worth far more than several short ones. Our letter grid strategy shows how much more.
Same letters, different words
Finding one full-length word does not mean there is not another. These pairs and trios use exactly the same letters:
| Word | Also spells |
|---|---|
| LISTEN | SILENT |
| PARTIES | PIRATES |
| SENATOR | TREASON |
| HARDEST | THREADS, TRASHED |
| PLAYERS | PARSLEY, REPLAYS |
So when a seven-letter word appears, give the letters one more shuffle before you move on. In a tile game the second word may fit the board where the first does not.
Games where making words is the whole game
Two kinds of game are built on this. In a tile game you draw a rack of letters and play words onto a crossword-style board. In a letter grid the letters sit in a square and you trace words through ones that touch, usually against a clock. The guide to the types of word games covers the rest of the family.
We make Wordfly: Daily Word Puzzles, which has one of each. In Tile Board you hold a rack of 7 tiles and play words to reach a target score in a limited number of turns; a move that uses the whole rack earns 40 extra points, and the Shuffle button under the rack is step five built in. Letter Grid is a 4×4 grid with 90 seconds on the clock, and words of three letters or more through touching letters, diagonals included. For the short words that still earn their place, see short words that score.
Is a word solver cheating?
Against another player, yes. For a crossword you are stuck on, or after a round to see what you missed, it is a tool like a dictionary. If you want to get better at this rather than just get the answer, give the five steps two minutes first, then look the letters up and note the words you did not see. The endings and pairs you missed are the ones to look for next time.
Wordfly: Daily Word Puzzles
Make words from a rack of tiles in Tile Board or from a grid against the clock in Letter Grid, plus a daily Groups puzzle. Free to download with ads, no account, plays offline.
Frequently asked
How do you make words from a set of letters?
Split the vowels from the consonants, take a likely ending off first (-S, -ED, -ING, -ER), pair the letters that often go together (ST, TR, PL, TH), then find a short word and extend it one letter at a time. Shuffling the letters into a new order helps when you stall.
How many words can you make from seven letters?
It depends on the letters and on the word list. From P L A N E T S, Wordfly's American English list accepts 212 words of three letters or more and its British list 178. Only two use all seven: PLANETS and the rarer PLATENS.
Do plurals and other endings count?
In most word games, yes: plurals, past tenses and other forms are separate entries in the word list. Wordfly's English lists include them, which is why adding an S or an ED is the quickest way to a longer word.
What do you call a word made from the same letters as another?
An anagram. LISTEN and SILENT are anagrams of each other, and so are PARTIES and PIRATES. A set of seven letters can hide more than one full-length word, so it is worth looking again after you find the first.
Is there a game where you make words from letters?
Many. Tile games give you a rack of letters to play onto a board, and letter grids ask you to trace words through touching letters against a clock. Wordfly: Daily Word Puzzles has both, Tile Board and Letter Grid, free on iPhone and playable offline.
More reading: letter grid strategy · short words that score · how to play Wordfly.