If you don’t know how to unscramble words that have been jumbled, the process can be frustrating. Thankfully, there are tips to help you do this more quickly than you may expect. You have, most likely, played the game of Scrabble in many scenarios, such as with family or friends, at school, or even online; and you might think people who seem to be really good at deciphering scrambled words are somehow gifted, but there’s a skill to unscrambling words, so stick around for a short while and find out how to take your unscrambling skills to the next level!
Common Letter Pairs
The easiest way to decipher words is to analyze how two or more letters behave together. By doing this, you can make progress and finally solve the word. A third E, for example, is likely to be a combination of two letters in many words, making it easier for you to guess. If you find a word that appears to be one of them, you should be able to figure out how to unscramble the rest. We recommend looking at where words break up. If they always start with vowels or end with vowels, then those are good places to try new combinations until you find one you like.
Recognize Word Fragments and Smaller Words
Learning how to recognize word fragments and smaller letter words can improve your ability to unscramble words. We can construct a proper word from SALTASUD, for instance, by combining a couple of word fragments. The most common letter combinations are “SA” and “AS” These fragments can be used as building blocks for words, as in this example we get:
ASsault
SAlads
Another tip would be to look out for common prefixes and suffixes.
For a statistical perspective, removing characters from the start or end of a word can lower the total number of combinations possible for the middle of the alphabet. This concept is called permutations. In other words, there are fewer possible combinations for more frequently used letters, so an exponentially lesser number of combinations is needed for fewer letters. Characters are more likely to come in combinations that make words when grouped together for prefixes and suffixes. The solution may be to try and unscramble some of the words that you’ve been playing around with so far to make it easier to think of another word that’s near the word in question. Besides helping people with reading comprehension, recognition of words’ roots and prefixes/suffixes will help people broaden their vocabularies. You may not know the meaning of a word but might be able to figure it out from the word’s root.
In case you still struggle to come up with words relevant to your topic, tools like Unscrambled Words are available to help and can help you figure out the highest-scoring word you can use.
Search for Vowels and Consonants
The vowel is a good starting point for derived consonants. Why do vowels work better than consonants? Syllables typically contain at least one vowel letter, with vowel sounds occurring more frequently in the middle, and the remaining letters recur in relation to vowels. The number of possible words that can be made in a given language is very limited if the number of consonants is greater than the number of vowels, or vice versa. Try putting some consonants in the template, vowels in the middle, and moving the letters around. You’ll come up with something quickly. As you become familiar with the English language, you will also begin to notice some familiar patterns, like “consonant-vowel – consonant-vowel,” which makes up a large proportion of four-letter words.
Look for common two-letter consonant pairs like “th”. Example: GTHO can be converted to G O T H. 
Whenever we see an S, it either forms a syllable within the word it forms or adds it to the end of the last word to make it plural. This is one of the reasons the letter S is typically the most valuable letter in the Scrabble board game. Let’s see how this method works; given the word ‘veaws’, it recognizes the VE pattern. After rearranging the letters, we get _ve_. An easy way to make words is to start by writing an A (preceding V, which is the most common place to start letters) like this: _AVE_ By substituting one letter in each word with a new one, we find that WAVES fits the remaining spaces.
Here is another trick; by placing a vowel in the 2nd position of the unscrambled word, we can construct the word using consonants around it. In the last example, we can pick the letter A or E and put other letters before and after it. This leads to the possible combinations of SAV, VAS, WAV, and VAW.
In Short
If you’re struggling to decipher what’s on the sheet, by applying these tips and tricks you will simplify the problem. Next time you try to unscramble a word, try this technique:
- Observe a specific letter formation
- By removing the letters that often makeup roots, suffixes, and prefixes, you’re more likely to notice common patterns.
We hope this brief guide has been helpful and that you’re now ready to beat your next Scramble match. Take these new-found skills to Word with Friends or Scrabble. We wish you good luck and don’t forget to have a good time.
