An anagram is a word that went to a costume party dressed as another word. Some letter sets throw bigger parties than others, and if you play Scrabble, Text Twist or newspaper Jumble, knowing which ones can turn a stuck rack into a choice of plays.
To find the biggest parties, we grouped all 155,980 game words in the JumbleFix word list by their letters, ignoring order. Words that share a group are exact anagrams: same letters, same counts, different spelling.
The champions, by length
Four letters. The letters A, E, S and T make 8 words: ATES, EAST, EATS, ETAS, SATE, SEAT, SETA and TEAS. Close behind, A, I, L and R make 7: ARIL, LAIR, LARI, LIAR, LIRA, RAIL and RIAL. For a set that small, that is a lot of costumes.
Five letters. A, E, P, R and S lead with 12 words, including APERS, APRES, ASPER, PARES, PARSE, PEARS, PRASE, PRESA, REAPS, SPARE and SPEAR. Second place goes to a set every Wordle player knows: A, E, L, S and T make 10 words, namely LEAST, SETAL, SLATE, STALE, STEAL, STELA, TAELS, TALES, TEALS and TESLA.
Six letters. A, E, L, R, S and T make 11: ALERTS, ALTERS, ARTELS, ESTRAL, LASTER, RATELS, SALTER, SLATER, STALER, STELAR and TALERS. Three more sets tie at 9 each: the CAPERS set (CAPERS, CRAPES, ESCARP, PACERS, PARSEC, RECAPS, SCRAPE, SECPAR, SPACER), the INSERT set (ESTRIN, INERTS, INSERT, INTERS, NITERS, NITRES, SINTER, TRIENS, TRINES) and the PLATES set (PALEST, PALETS, PASTEL, PETALS, PLATES, PLEATS, SEPTAL, STAPLE, TEPALS).
Seven letters. A, E, I, N, R, S and T make 9 words: ANESTRI, ANTSIER, NASTIER, RATINES, RETAINS, RETINAS, RETSINA, STAINER and STEARIN. Add a G instead of the T and you get 8: EARINGS, ERASING, GAINERS, REAGINS, REGAINS, REGINAS, SEARING and SERINGA.
Eight letters. A, E, G, I, N, R, S and T make 7: ANGRIEST, ASTRINGE, GANISTER, GANTRIES, GRANITES, INGRATES and RANGIEST. Swap the S for an L and you get the friendliest set in the list: ALERTING, ALTERING, INTEGRAL, RELATING, TANGLIER and TRIANGLE. Six words, one triangle, no arguments.
Anagrams get rarer as words get longer
Short words share letters easily. Long words, not so much. Here is the share of words in each length that have at least one exact anagram partner:
- 4 letters: 52.4%
- 5 letters: 44.4%
- 6 letters: 36.2%
- 7 letters: 27.7%
- 8 letters: 18.9%
So more than half of all four-letter words can be rearranged into another word, while fewer than one eight-letter word in five can. If a long Jumble scramble looks like it has two answers, it probably does not; if a short one does, it very often does.
Why the same letters keep winning
Look back at the champions and the same handful of letters keeps turning up: A, E, I, S, T, R, N and L. These are common letters that are comfortable almost anywhere in a word, at the start, in the middle or at the end. A Q or a J has a much more fixed idea of where it wants to sit, so sets that contain one rarely rearrange into anything else.
Scrabble players use this on purpose. They memorize six-letter "stems" that combine with many seventh letters to make a seven-letter word, because playing all seven tiles from your rack earns a 50-point bonus. In our list:
- RETINA (A, E, I, N, R, T) takes 17 different seventh letters and makes 53 seven-letter words. Add a C for CERTAIN, a D for TRAINED, a G for GRANITE or INGRATE, an H for HAIRNET.
- SATIRE (A, E, I, R, S, T) takes 18 different seventh letters and makes 69 words. Add a B for BAITERS, a C for RACIEST, a D for ASTRIDE or TIRADES, an F for FAIREST.
If you are holding most of RETINA or SATIRE, keep those tiles and fish for the seventh. It is the closest thing Scrabble has to a sure bet.
Using this at the board
- Pick the anagram that fits the board, not the first one you see. If your rack is AEINRST, there are nine seven-letter words to choose from. One of them will likely fit a hook or a premium square better than the others.
- In Jumble, check for twins. Short scrambles of common letters often have more than one valid answer. The circled letters in the final puzzle usually tell you which one the puzzle wants.
- In Text Twist and Word Cookies, start with the rich sets. A round built on letters like AEPRS will have many words of the same length, so clear those first while you still remember the pattern.
To see every anagram for a set of letters, type them into the anagram solver, or open a ready-made list like words from AEINRST.
How we counted
We started from the ENABLE word list, a public-domain list used by many word games (172,823 words), and kept the 155,980 words that are also active on JumbleFix. Two words count as anagrams when they use exactly the same letters the same number of times. Plurals and verb forms count as separate words, because games accept them. A few groups include words we have left out of the examples above for taste, so some lists show fewer words than the group's total.
This article was written with the help of an AI model. Every count and word list in it comes from queries against the JumbleFix word list.