The Word Blog
Strategy, vocabulary, and word-game insights.
How to Unscramble Words: A Complete Step-by-Step Guide
A practical method for turning any jumble of letters into real words, with worked examples you can follow by hand.
How an Anagram Solver Works (and Why It's So Fast)
A plain-English look at the clever trick behind instant anagram search, plus the biggest anagram families in English.
How to Unscramble Words With Blank Tiles and Wildcards
Blanks are the most powerful tiles in the bag. Here's how to find the best word for them instead of wasting them.
Two-Letter Scrabble Words: The Complete List With Tips
All 128 two-letter words in our Collins-based dictionary, grouped so they're easier to learn, plus how to use them for big parallel plays.
3-Letter Scrabble Words: High-Scoring Lists and How to Use Them
The three-letter words that score most with J, Q, X, Z and K, the best vowel dumps, and how to use them as hooks.
Words With Q but No U: Every Short Play You Need
Stuck with a Q and no U? These are the Q-without-U words that get you out of trouble, with meanings and tips.
Highest-Scoring Scrabble Words: J, X and Z Plays That Win Games
How to turn the 8- and 10-point tiles into 40+ point turns, with short word lists and the math behind big scores.
4-Letter Words: Useful Lists for Scrabble, Wordle and Crosswords
Common four-letter words by starting letter, plus the high-scoring and awkward-tile words that actually win games.
5-Letter Words: Common Words by First and Last Letter
A practical five-letter word list for Wordle and Scrabble, organised by starting and ending letter, with tips for using it.
6-Letter Words: Common Lists and the Stems That Lead to Bingos
Everyday six-letter words by starting letter, plus the six-letter stems that most often grow into seven-letter Scrabble bingos.
7-Letter Bingo Words: How to Find 50-Point Plays
How Scrabble players spot seven-letter bingos: the best letter combinations, common endings, and a step-by-step search method.
Best Wordle Starting Words: What Letter Frequency Actually Says
We counted letters across about 2,800 common five-letter words to see which openers test the most likely letters, and where the popular advice goes wrong.
Scrabble Strategy for Beginners: 10 Habits That Raise Your Score
Ten practical habits, from rack balance to board defence, that move new players from 200-point games to 300-point games.
Scrabble Endgame Strategy: How to Win the Last Few Moves
When the bag runs low, Scrabble becomes a different game. Here's how to count tiles, go out first and avoid the 20-point swing.
Scrabble Tile Values and Letter Distribution Explained
How many of each tile are in the bag, what each letter is worth, and why the numbers were chosen the way they were.
Words With Friends vs Scrabble: Every Difference That Matters
Tile values, bonuses, dictionaries and board layout compared side by side, and how to adjust your strategy when you switch games.
How to Play Scrabble: Rules, Scoring and Your First Game
A clear walkthrough of Scrabble's rules, from setup and the first move to scoring, challenges and how the game ends.
Scrabble Dictionaries Explained: NWL, Collins and OSPD
Which word list decides whether a Scrabble word is valid, how the official lists differ, and what our dictionary is based on.
How to Solve the Daily Jumble Faster
A step-by-step approach to the newspaper Jumble: unscrambling the four words, collecting the circled letters and cracking the pun.
NYT Spelling Bee Strategy: How to Find More Words and the Pangram
Practical techniques for the New York Times Spelling Bee: working the centre letter, using suffixes, and hunting down the pangram.
How to Solve Tough Crossword Clues: Techniques That Work
How to read crossword clues the way setters write them: tense and number matching, abbreviations, wordplay signals and using crossing letters.
Palindrome Words: The Complete Guide With Lists
We found 149 palindromes of three or more letters in our dictionary. Here are the common ones, the longest ones, and how palindromes work.
Words With No Vowels: Real Words for Scrabble and Puzzles
Yes, English has words without A, E, I, O or U. Here are all the ones in our dictionary, with and without Y, and how to use them.
Words With All Five Vowels (and Words With Them in Order)
About 4,000 words in our dictionary contain A, E, I, O and U. Here are the shortest, the most common, and the rare ones with the vowels in alphabetical order.
Prefixes and Suffixes That Multiply Your Word Count
The word beginnings and endings that appear most often in our 275,000-word dictionary, and how to use them to find longer words in games.