Often look for common endings such as an 'i' 'n' 'g' often means that there is an 'ing' word

there so you can quickly scan for this. Over Other possibilities include words ending with 'tion' and maybe tenses such as '-ed' words and so forth - always worth checking. Another method commonly used is to break it down and list the word in alphabetical order, e.g. to turn food into 'd,f,o,o' - some people find this method easy. Others prefer to split a word into consonants and vowels for solving, thus solving could become: 'i,o' and 'g,l,n,s,v' This works well for some people who like to work out what combinations of vowels and consonants are possible or common and work out from there. Another commmon technique is to write the letters out in the shape of a circle, again many find it easier to capture all this information visually at once in that format rather than written in a linear fashion. Anagram Solving Tip #1 Prefixes & Suffixes Many words contain a common prefix or suffix. Given a jumbled set of letters, you can often make your job much easier by first removing two or more letters that form a possible prefix or suffix, and then anagramming the remaining set of letters. Here's an example... P-D-E-D-U-E-N First, let's look for a common prefix, and we'll put it to one side. The first one that jumps out might be UN, giving us... U-N + P-D-E-D-E Do the letters P-D-E-D-E make a valid UN- word? None I can think of. Are there any other plausible prefixes here? Sure. Let's try UP... U-P + D-E-D-E-N Aha! D-E-D-E-N makes ENDED, giving... UPENDED See what I mean? By locating a common prefix we have reduced the difficult task of anagramming seven letters, to the easier task of anagramming five letters. Here's another example...

D-U-A-T-H-O-N Again, let's take out UN... U-N + D-A-T-H-O Hmmm... Nothing doing here. What about OUT... O-U-T + D-A-H-N OUT-HAND is obvious, but it isn't a word. Wait! What about... HANDOUT Bingo! Literally. Just to see that you've got the idea, here's a harder one for you to practice... N-O-F-L-O-U-S-P Struggling? Don't worry. I've put the answer in the P.S. to this email ;-) Now, this is certainly a great technique for solving anagrams, but it isn't fool-proof. Why? Because lots of words, likeEROTICA, for example, don't contain a common prefix or suffix. That's why we can't stop here... Anagram Solving Tip #2 Alphagrams Now here's a system that diehard Scrabble experts use in solving anagrams. The alphagram of a word is simply a list of the word's letters in alphabetical order. Take the word WORDPLAY, for example. Listing the letters of this word in alphabetical order gives... A-D-L-O-P-R-W-Y So we call A-D-L-O-P-R-W-Y the alphagram of WORDPLAY. Pretty easy huh? But what's the point? The point is this: alphagrams enable you to solve an anagram using your memory, rather than actually unscrambling letters. Let me give you an example... Suppose you are trying to unscramble the letters U-N-M-B-A-E-S. Now there are zillions of ways these letters might turn up in a word game: U-N-M-B-A-E-S, B-U-M-A-N-E-S, N-U-M-B-E-S-A, and so on. You can't possibly memorize every single one of these combinations. But suppose you just memorize one of these zillions of patterns? Which one? The alphagram: A-B-EM-N-S-U. More to the point, suppose you memorize the rule...

A-B-E-M-N-S-U => S-U-N-B-E-A-M Then, as soon as you are faced with the letters U-N-M-B-A-E-S , you immediately rearrange them to form the alphagram A-B-E-M-N-S-U, and rely on your memory to return the solution ofSUNBEAM. Sound easy? It isn't! But... The value of the method does not lie in the fact that it is easy, but rather that it reduces creative guesswork (that is, genuine anagramming) to mechanical work (memorized anagramming). Lots of it, to be sure, but mechanical nonetheless. And if it's mechanical, then it's doable. I can prove it's doable, because there are people out there in the word game community who can do this in their sleep. You can give one of these anagram experts just about any set of scrambled letters under nine letters or so in length, and they can find the anagram almost every time! And so will you. Provided you do these two things...

Create a list of alphagrams of all the words you would like to be able to anagram Memorize this list by going over and over and over it again. Use flash cards if you find them helpful (alphagram on one side - answer on the other)

NOTE -- I've put together all the alphagrams and solutionsthat you're ever likely to need in Scrabble and Words With Friends in Volume 3 of my Totally Unfair Word Game Guidesseries. After a lot of practice, it will become second nature to you. Given the letters G-A-N-T-T-A-S-E, you will form the alphagram A-A-E-G-N-S-T-T, and this will trigger your brain to recall the flash card on which you have the rule... A-A-E-G-N-S-T-T => STAGNATE Given the power of this method, you might think that our work here is done. Sorry. But we're just getting started here... Anagram Solving Tip #3 Stories & Pictures Something I haven't talked about yet is the possibility that a set of letters might have more than one anagram. When this happens, stories and pictures can be used to basically glue the answers together. That way, you only need to find one of the solutions, and theothers will tag along for the ride. For example, the alphagram A-C-D-E-H-I-N has two solutions:CHAINED and ECHIDNA. These answers can be glued together by simply imagining an ECHIDNA CHAINED to a lamppost. That way, once

you've found the easier solution,CHAINED, the much trickier anagram will follow suit. Likewise, TOENAIL is tricky to find from A-E-I-L-N-O-T , but it is an anagram of the easier-to-find ELATION, which has the common -ION ending. So just imagine the ELATION you would feel if somebody pulled out your TOENAIL with a set of pliers. Sarcasm works well in this game! I'll let you practice this technique by building a humorous mental image around the anagram triplet... BEDROOM - BOREDOM - BROOMED TIP -- Never underestimate the power of pictures in improving your recall. I learned this best from US memory champion Ron White, a man with an ordinary innate memory who achieves freakish recall with a picture-based memory system he teaches(click here for more). Anagram Solving Tip #4 Fakes & Phonies In Scrabble, a 'phoney' refers to a word that is not allowed, and is therefore taken off the board if challenged. I use the word 'fake' to describe a word that you know to be false, but you use it anyway. Fakes can be very useful for solving anagrams, but they are also very dangerous, because if you forget they are fakes, and accidentally play them in a game they become ... well ... phonies! (Of course, if you're playing Words With Friends, there's no penalty for playing false words, so this technique is perfectly safe.) Suppose you have the rack E-F-G-I-N-O-R, for example. Now the solution to this alphagram is FOREIGN, which is a common enough word, but one which is very hard to spot. When studying this alphagram you might put the -ING suffix to one side and form the intentional fake FROE-ING*. When you form this fake from your rack in a game, you should recall from your 'fakes list' that you have the bingo FOREIGN. To connect the two in your mind, you might think of a sentence like 'I was toing and froeing* about whether to work in aforeign country'). It's a great technique for finding tricky anagrams, but it is also a great technique for accidentally learning false words, so I'll leave it up to your own taste as to whether you use this method or not. If you do use it though, one thing I do recommend, is that you use it sparingly as a last resort. Anagram Solving Tip #5 Consograms

A consogram is similar to an alphagram except that it only uses the consonants in a word, and ignores the vowels. The reason for this is that when you sound out a word, it is the consonants that do most of the work, and it is therefore the consonants that do most of the work in anagramming. I find consograms a great way to find words that contain a large proportion of vowels. Let me show you what I mean. Suppose you have the rack A-D-U-M-O-E-I. I simply strip the vowels out of this rack and focus on D-M. Now I recall my consogram list for this pair of letters. To remind myself of this list, I replace D-M with the word DaM, and think of it as 'my dam list'. I have a picture in my head of a cat being thrown into a dam, and it is obviously not too happy about the situation. And it's a very short step from that picture to the solution: MIAOUED! Of course, not everyone wants to memorize tens of thousands of a anagrams to become a world champion Scrabble player. Nowadays I find it really fun just browsing anagram lists and picking out fun examples to commit to memory. See if you can use the above techniques, or invent some of your own, to guarantee that you would find the following words from scrambled letters... EMERITA EMIRATE MEATIER AUGMENT MUTAGEN CHESTY SCYTHE CHAINED ECHIDA DOORSTEP TORPEDOS NICOTINE COTININE OVERNEAT RENOVATE ADORED DEODAR POOPING POGONIP HORMONES MOORHENS MAHOGANY HOGMANAY SPORADIC PICADORS SPECIAL PLAICES

IMAGINER MIGRAINE OPUNTIA UTOPIAN JITTER TRIJET MOROSE ROMEOS OVERLIES RELIEVOS VOLERIES FATHER HAFTER TREFAH GREASY GYRASE YAGERS MOORWORT ROOTWORM TOMORROW WORMROOT PANTED PEDANT PENTAD MISMATE SEMIMAT TAMMIES ARIETTES ITERATES TEARIEST TREATIES TREATISES ARDEBS BARDES BEARDS BREADS DEBARS SABRED SERDAB

Solving Anagrams In 3 Lessons Solving anagrams is a critical skill in Scrabble, Cryptic Crosswords, Text Twist, and an endless list of other word games and puzzles. It is also a lot of fun. Whatever your particular motive for anagram-solving, this page should help. What I'm going to do here is describe three extremely useful techniques to improve your ability to unscramble anagrams quickly. These techniques were largely developed by expert Scrabble players, however I find the skills invaluable no matter what the anagramming context. Solving Anagrams - Lesson 1 Prefixes and Suffixes Many words contain a common prefix or suffix. Given a jumbled set of letters, you can often make your job much easier by first removing two or more letters that form a possible prefix or suffix, and then anagramming the remaining set of letters. Here's an example...

P-D-E-D-U-E-N First, let's look for a common prefix, and we'll put it to one side. The first one that jumps out might be UN, giving us... U-N + P-D-E-D-E Do the letters PDEDE make a valid UN- word? None I can think of. Are there any other plausible prefixes here? Sure. Let's try UP... U-P + D-E-D-E-N Aha! DEDEN makes ENDED, giving... UPENDED See what I mean? By locating a common prefix we have reduced the difficult task of anagramming seven letters, to the easier task of anagramming five letters. Here's another example... D-U-A-T-H-O-N Again, let's take out UN... U-N + D-A-T-H-O Hmmm... Nothing doing here. What about OUT... O-U-T + D-A-H-N OUT-HAND is obvious, but it isn't a word. Wait! What about... HANDOUT Bingo! Literally. Just to see that you've got the idea, here's a harder one for you to practice. I'll put a spoiler near the bottom of the page for you... N-O-F-L-O-U-S-P Now, this is certainly a great technique for solving anagrams, but it isn't fool-proof. Why? Because lots of words, like EROTICA, for example, don't contain a common prefix or suffix. That's why we can't stop here... Solving Anagrams - Lesson 2 Alphagrams Now here's a system that diehard Scrabble experts use in solving anagrams.

The alphagram of a word is simply a list of the word's letters in alphabetical order. Take the word WORDPLAY, for example. Listing the letters of this word in alphabetical order gives... A-D-L-O-P-R-W-Y So we call ADLOPRWY the alphagram of WORDPLAY. Pretty easy huh? But what's the point? The point is this: alphagrams enable you to solve an anagram using your memory, rather than actually unscrambling letters. Let me give you an example... Suppose you are trying to unscramble the letters UNMBAES. Now there are zillions of ways these letters might turn up in a word game:UNMBAES, BUMANES, NUMBESA, and so on. You can't possibly memorize every single one of these combinations. But suppose you just memorize one of these zillions of patterns? Which one? The alphagram of course: ABEMNSU. More to the point, suppose you memorize the rule... ABEMNSU => SUNBEAM Then, as soon as you are faced with the letters UNMBAES, you immediately rearrange them to form the alphagram ABEMNSU, and rely on your memory to return the solution of SUNBEAM. Sound easy? It isn't! But... The value of the method does not lie in the fact that it is easy, but rather that it reduces creative guesswork (that is, genuine anagramming) to mechanical work (memorized anagramming). Lots of it, to be sure, but mechanical nonetheless. And if it's mechanical, then it's doable. I can prove it's doable, because there are people out there in the word game community who can do this in their sleep. You can give one of these anagram experts just about any set of scrambled letters under nine letters or so in length, and they can find the anagram almost every time! And so will you. Provided you do these two things...

Create a list of alphagrams of all the words you would like to be able to anagram Memorize this list by going over and over and over it again. Use flash cards if you find them helpful (alphagram on one side - answer on the other) After a lot of practice, it will become second nature to you. Given the letters GANTTASE, you will form the alphagram AAEGNSTT, and this will trigger your brain to recall the flash card on which you have the rule... AAEGNSTT => STAGNATE Given the power of this method, you might think that our work here is done. Not quite. There is one more thing we need to take care of...

Solving Anagrams - Lesson 3 Stories & Pictures Something I haven't talked about yet is the possibility that a set of letters might have more than one anagram. When this happens, stories and pictures can be used to basically glue the answers together. That way, you only need to find one of the solutions, and the others will tag along. TIP Never underestimate the power of pictures in improving your recall. US memory champion Ron White achieves his freakish recall ability with a picture-based memory system. For example, the letters A-C-D-E-H-I-N have two solutions: CHAINEDand ECHIDNA. These answers can be glued together by simply imagining an ECHIDNA CHAINED to a lamppost. That way, once you've found the easier solution, CHAINED, the much trickier anagram will follow suit. Likewise, TOENAIL is tricky to find from A-E-I-L-N-O-T, but it is an anagram of the easier-tofind ELATION, which has the common -IONending. So just imagine the ELATION you would feel if somebody pulled out your TOENAIL with a set of pliers! Sarcasm is fine in this game. To finish off, I'll let you practice your final technique for solving anagrams by building a mental image around the anagram triplet... BEDROOM - BOREDOM - BROOMED