How to play Anagrams

1 player

Score as many points as you can from one rack of six letters, by finding words of three letters or more that can be spelled from them.

The rules, step by step

1. 1

   Six letter tiles appear. They are the same six for every player, and a new set appears at midnight where you are.

2. 2

   Type a word, or tap the tiles to spell it, and press Enter.

3. 3

   A word counts if it is three letters or more, is in the word list, and can be spelled from the rack — using each letter no more often than the rack holds it.

4. 4

   Three letters score 1, four score 2, five score 4, and all six score 8.

5. 5

   Shuffle the tiles whenever you like. Rearranging them is how most people find the long one.

6. 6

   Press the I am done button to finish. You get your rank, your streak, and the full list of what you missed.

Three tips that change how you play

• Find the six-letter word first, or at least look for it first. It is worth eight points — the same as eight three-letter words — and there is always exactly one hiding in the rack, because that is what the rack was cut from.
• Hunt for endings rather than for words. Sweep the rack for -ing, -ed, -er, -es and -y, then see what is left over. Six letters minus a two-letter ending is a four-letter stem, which is a much smaller thing to stare at.
• Shuffle when you are stuck, and keep shuffling. The order the tiles happen to be in is doing more to your eyes than you think, and a word you have looked past ten times often falls out on the next rotation.

Working a rack through

Say the tiles read G, D, R, A, E, N. Three vowels-worth of material and four common consonants, so there is plenty in here. Start with the endings: -ED gives you a four-letter stem of G, R, A, N — GRAN is a word, RANG is a word, so RANGED is worth a look, and it is. Six letters, eight points, and you have the long one out of the way inside a minute. Now go back for the rest without hurrying: DEAR, DARE, READ and DEAR again in another order — three of those four are separate words and all of them count. RANGE, ANGER and RANGED share the same letters and score separately. GRAND, GRADE, DANGER. Then sweep the threes: AGE, ERA, RAN, RAG, END, EAR, NAG, DEN. Nothing there is clever, and it is another eight points. The rack was GARDEN, which you may or may not have found, and which is worth exactly the same as RANGED — the game does not care which of the two you got to first.

Three mistakes that cost beginners the game

Filling up on three-letter words.

Ten three-letter words are worth ten points. One six-letter word and a couple of fives are worth sixteen, and take a quarter of the time. Sweep the short ones up at the end if you want the completion, but do not spend the first ten minutes on them.

Using a letter twice when the rack has one of it.

The rack is six actual tiles, not six kinds of letter. One E does not make a word wanting two, and the board will tell you the guess is not from these letters rather than that it is not a word. If a promising word keeps getting refused, count its letters against the tiles.

Finishing the moment you run out of ideas.

Pressing done is what records the day, so there is nothing to lose by leaving the rack open and coming back to it. Most people find two or three more words on a second look, and the difference between Getting there and Good is often a single five-letter word.

Common questions about Anagrams