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What Is an Anagram? An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once. For example, LISTEN is an anagram of SILENT, EARTH rearranges to HEART, and ASTRONOMER can be shuffled into MOON STARER. Anagrams appear throughout word games, puzzles, literature, … Read more

What Makes Wordle Different from Other Word Games Wordle gives you exactly six attempts to guess a hidden 5-letter word, with color-coded feedback after each guess. A green tile means the letter is in the correct position, yellow means the letter exists in the word but in a different spot, and gray means the letter … Read more

Why Word Length Matters in Scrabble Every seasoned Scrabble player knows that mastering words of different lengths is the key to consistent high scores. While short 2-letter and 3-letter words help you play parallel moves and squeeze into tight spots on the board, longer 7-letter and 8-letter words unlock the coveted 50-point bonus (called a … Read more

Drawing a Q in Scrabble without a U used to ruin my day. I would burn a turn exchanging tiles or, worse, get stuck with it at the end and eat the -10 penalty. Then a friend at a local tournament handed me a list of Q-without-U words and told me to memorize it. That … Read more

I lost a tournament game by 4 points because I did not know QI was a valid Scrabble word. Four points. The Q was sitting on a triple-letter square and I passed it up because I thought you needed QU- to play Q. That loss sent me down a rabbit hole of two-letter words that … Read more

My Wordle average was 4.2 guesses for the first six months I played. Not bad, but not great. Then I started tracking patterns and thinking about letter frequency instead of just guessing words I liked. Within a month my average dropped to 3.4. Here is everything I learned. Your First Guess Matters More Than You … Read more

I built my first word unscrambler in a college dorm room using Python and a dictionary file I downloaded from the internet. It was terrible. It took 30 seconds to process 6-letter inputs and crashed on anything longer. But it taught me something important about how these tools actually work under the hood. Most people … Read more

Word games are having their biggest moment ever. Wordle got millions hooked during the pandemic, and now in 2026, the NYT Games app has over 12 million subscribers playing crosswords, Connections, Strands, and Spelling Bee daily. Scrabble’s still going strong (the World Championship prize pool hit record numbers last year). And mobile word games? They’re … Read more

About a year ago, I decided to do a crossword every day. Not because I was good at them – I absolutely wasn’t. I’d stare at a Monday NYT puzzle and still have blank squares after 20 minutes. But I’d heard they were good for your brain, and honestly? I just wanted to stop being … Read more

My mom texts me every single day with screenshots of her Words With Friends board, asking “is this a good play?” And every single day, I tell her the same thing: you’re leaving the triple word square wide open. If you’re like my mom – or like me three years ago – and you want … Read more