Scrabble Word Finder

What the Scrabble word finder does

Short answer: enter your tiles and play the top result. The finder takes up to seven rack letters plus up to two blanks, searches a dictionary of 45,525 words, and returns everything you can actually make, highest score first with the best three plays pinned at the top. Add a board pattern and it narrows the list to words that physically fit the slot you are staring at.

It is the scored cousin of our anagram solver. That tool answers “what words hide in these letters?” while this one tells you which of them is worth the most. Seven-tile plays carry a bingo badge, and results group by length so you can match a word to the space available.

How it works

Everything runs in your browser. The page downloads the word list once, so every search is a single pass over that list and results update instantly as you type.

Rack mode uses letter counting rather than permutations. For each dictionary word the solver tallies how many of each letter it needs and checks your rack can supply them, with blanks covering any shortfall, one blank per missing tile. Words longer than your total tile count are skipped. The frequency test handles duplicates properly: a rack with one E can never make a word that needs two unless a blank covers the second.

The board pattern box switches the solver into slot-fitting mode. Type the letters already on the board and an underscore for each empty square, so _A_E means a four-square slot with an A and an E already placed. Only words of exactly that length which match the fixed letters survive, and the open squares must be coverable by your rack and blanks. Board letters add their face value to the score but cost you no tiles, exactly as in the real game, and a play that fills seven open squares from your rack still counts as a bingo even inside a longer word.

Scoring uses the standard tile values, with blank-covered letters scoring zero and a 50-point bonus for any play using all seven rack tiles. Results sort by score, ties broken alphabetically. The values:

• 1 point: A E I L N O R S T U
• 2 points: D G
• 3 points: B C M P
• 4 points: F H V W Y
• 5 points: K
• 8 points: J X
• 10 points: Q Z

Worked example

Say your rack is ADEGILN. Searching all 45,525 words returns 169 playable results. Right at the top sit 3 bingos, ALIGNED, DEALING and LEADING, each worth 59 points. The tiles alone are worth just 9 points. The rest is the bingo bonus, which is why strong players build whole turns around finding one.

Now give the board a say: a four-square slot with an A second and an E fourth. Enter _A_E and the same rack returns 7 fits, led by GADE at 6points. The board’s A and E contribute 2 of those points free, and your rack supplies only the two open squares.

Blanks transform the picture. Add one blank to the same rack and the list grows from 169 words to 2121, roughly 13 times as many. A blank scores zero, so its worth is never the points it earns but the words it unlocks.

Strategy tips

• Hunt bingos first. This dictionary holds 9,886 seven-letter words, and the 50-point bonus outweighs almost any clever placement of a single heavy tile. Keep flexible one-point letters and offload awkward duplicates early.
• Build around common endings. The example rack above pays out because it can keep an -ING or -ED ending intact. Racks that preserve such endings, or starts like RE- and UN-, bingo far more often than random hoards.
• Save blanks for bingos. The jump from 169 to 2121 words shows what a blank is worth. Spending one on a short word for a few extra points is almost always a mistake.
• Test the real slot before you commit. Raw rack lists flatter you, because the board rarely lets you play your best word. Put the actual pattern in and compare what genuinely fits. If you only know the shape of a missing word, the crossword solver runs the same pattern matching without needing a rack.
• Check heavy tiles against the board. Q and Z score 10, J and X score 8. The finder shows base values only, so a lower-ranked word that lands a heavy tile on a premium square can beat the top result. Scan the top handful, not just first place.
• Practise spotting anagrams unaided. Our anagram solving guide teaches the letter-sorting habits that make a jumbled rack readable at a glance, which is the skill this tool automates.

Related research

• How many five-letter words are there? The corpus numbers behind our word lists and tools.
• How to solve anagrams: manual techniques for unscrambling letters without a solver.
• Word game research hub: letter frequencies, opener rankings and the data behind every tool on this site.