Word Finder
Enter your letters and see every word they can make — longest first, blanks supported. Checked against the public-domain ENABLE list of 172,820 words, entirely in your browser.
2–20 letters a–z; spaces are ignored. Type ? for a blank tile (up to 2).
Results appear here — enter letters above.
How the matching works
The finder treats your letters as a multiset — a bag of tiles where copies matter. A word is
makeable when, for every letter, the word needs no more copies than your bag holds: RETAINS
(one R, one E, one T, one A, one I, one N, one S) makes retina but not
tartan, which needs two Ts and two As. Each blank (typed as ?) covers
exactly one missing copy of any letter, so a word matches when its total shortfall is no
larger than your number of blanks. Candidates are first filtered by length — a word longer
than your rack can never fit — then checked letter by letter, and results come back longest
first, alphabetical within each length.
Worked example: RETAINS
These numbers are computed at build time by the same engine that runs in your browser, so they
are exact for the shipped list. From the seven letters of RETAINS, the ENABLE list yields 256 words of two letters or more, including 9 full seven-letter anagrams (retinas, stainer, and nastier among them). Add one blank — RETAINS? — and
the total climbs to
3,356, with 65 eight-letter words now in reach.
That jump is typical: every blank multiplies the possibilities, which is exactly why blank tiles
are precious.
The word list: ENABLE, public domain
Results are checked against ENABLE — the Enhanced North American Benchmark LExicon — a word
list of 172,820 lowercase entries released into the public domain by its compilers, Alan Beale
and M. Cooper. Our copy was retrieved on July 18, 2026 from Peter Norvig's mirror at norvig.com/ngrams/enable1.txt and ships with this site unchanged apart from line-ending normalization; automated tests pin its
exact length and contents so it cannot drift silently.
The honest caveat that matters: popular word board games adjudicate plays against licensed dictionaries maintained by commercial publishers, and those lists differ from ENABLE at the margins. A word this finder shows can be rejected at a game table, and an official ruling can allow a word missing here. Treat this tool as an independent study aid built on a public-domain list — it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or a substitute for any game publisher's official dictionary.
Limitations, stated plainly
- No proper nouns — ENABLE excludes names, places, and trademarks by design.
- US-leaning spellings — many British variants are present, but the list's center of gravity is American English.
- A dated snapshot — ENABLE predates the 2006 tournament-dictionary additions, so newer entries such as QI and ZA are absent, and no words coined since are included.
- Result cap — enormous racks (say, many blanks and common letters) can match thousands of words; the finder reports exact counts for everything but lists at most 5,000 words, longest first.
Where the searching happens
The dictionary downloads to your browser once — about 0.6 MB compressed — and is cached for the page. Every search after that runs locally in JavaScript: the letters you type never leave your device, no account is needed, and the tool works on a flaky connection once the list has arrived. That is the same privacy stance as every other tool on this site.
Frequently asked questions
Why does my word game accept a word this finder does not list (or reject one it does)?
Because the adjudicating dictionaries differ. Popular word board games — Scrabble is the best-known example — rule on words using licensed, commercially maintained dictionaries, while this finder checks the public-domain ENABLE list. The two overlap heavily but are not identical, so an official ruling can differ from what you see here. This tool is an independent aid and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any game publisher.
How do blanks work?
Type ? for each blank tile, up to 2. A blank stands in for exactly one copy of any letter: a word matches when the letters it needs beyond what your rack supplies number no more than your blanks. With RETAINS plus one blank, the finder reports 3,356 words instead of 256.
Why are QI and ZA missing?
Honest limitation: the ENABLE list is a snapshot that predates the 2006 wave of tournament-dictionary additions, so famous newer two-letter words like QI and ZA are not in it. The list also omits proper nouns and leans toward US spellings.
Do my letters get sent to a server?
No. The word list downloads to your browser once (about 0.6 MB compressed), and every search runs locally against that copy — the letters you type never leave your device, consistent with this site’s privacy stance.
How are results ordered?
Longest words first — grouped by length, alphabetical within each group — because in most games and puzzles the longest find is the valuable one. A minimum-length filter hides the two- and three-letter noise when you only want the big words.
Matching runs locally in your browser against the public-domain ENABLE list (172,820 entries; provenance above). Game adjudication uses licensed dictionaries and can differ. See the methodology page.