Have you ever asked yourself what is an anagram? And, how do anagrams relate to building words in the game of Scrabble? Well, an anagram is a word or phrase that is formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. Basically, it is scrambling a set of letters of a word to form another new word or phrase. For example, the letters of the word ‘dormitory’ may be scrambled to reveal the new phrase ‘dirty room’. The letters in Clint Eastwood’s name may also be rearranged to form the phrase ‘Old West Action’. There are countless words and phrases that can be transformed into new anagrams. Learning this process of ‘anagramming’ will definitely give you a competitive edge over your opponents when playing word games like Scrabble. Building words in Scrabble has a lot to do with the ‘anagramming’ process. Anagramming during Scrabble gameplay is a constant word building maneuver. The two go together hand in hand. Right at the onset of selecting your letters, your mind begins the anagram mode to rearrange the letters you have chosen to build the best possible word. Your game score depends on how good you are at rearranging letters and shuffling them around to build words that will not only garner the highest possible point value, but to also link these words to the words that have already been placed on the game board.

INSTRUCTIONS

1. From the drop down menu, select the appropriate dictionary depending on which game you are playing and where (which country) you are playing from–TWL06, SOWPODS, OSPD4, ENABLE, OWL2.
2. In the RACK box, enter your letters to find the best possible word by clicking on SEARCH. Use a question mark to designate a blank tile.
3. If you want to use a specific beginning or ending for a word by using existing letters on the board, enter the letter or set of letters that your word must begin or end with in the PREFIX or SUFFIX box accordingly.
4. Select SCORE to filter results by maximum point value, or select LENGTH to filter results by the number of letters in a word.

When building words in Scrabble, you should consider each letter as a building block. Not only should you build words by rearranging the seven letters on your rack, but you should always plan ahead and consider the letters on the game board as building blocks as well. In other words, each letter on the board is an opportunity to create a ‘hook’ in the game of Scrabble. A Scrabble hook is when you can add a letter to the front or end of a word to form another new word. Building words in Scrabble with hooks is a great way to build your score. In a sense, creating a Scrabble hook has the same concept behind anagramming. You are building a new word by rearranging or adding letters. The difference is that in an anagram, you are given a set number of letters, and there is no additional letters to help you form a new word. On the other hand, a Scrabble hook includes additional letters to your set group of letters to form a new word. Scrabble word building and anagrams also have a lot to do with letter, or rack, management. You can find the more difficult plays when you arrange the letters on your rack in a certain way. For example, most Scrabble players know that there are many words that have a certain ending or common suffix. Words that end with -ing, -er, -ed, and -s fall under this category. Therefore, if you have any of these suffixes, you should rearrange your letters so that these word endings appear on the right side of your rack. There are also many words that begin with common prefixes, which include un-, re-, and in-. These letters that form basic prefixes should be moved to the left of your rack. When moving these letters and treating them as possible prefixes and suffixes, building a word can be done at a much faster pace and help you see something you may have ultimately missed at first glance. You can also use these prefixes and suffixes to create Scrabble hooks during gameplay by simply adding them to the front or end of an existing word on the game board. Building Scrabble words takes time and practice so it is a great idea to always play around with anagrams since it is the basis of building words in Scrabble and most other word games.