Word Scrambler
Type one word per line, choose how much of each word to scramble, and press Scramble. You get a numbered list of jumbled words with the answers hidden until you show them, and a button that copies just the scrambled words for a worksheet. Free, no sign-up; your words stay in your browser.
0 words
Scramble mode
How to Use the Word Scrambler
- 1. Enter your words. One word per line. A counter shows how many it found. Blank lines are skipped.
- 2. Choose a mode. Scramble all letters shuffles everything. Keep first letter leaves the opening letter where it is. Keep first and last letters shuffles only the middle.
- 3. Press Scramble. Each word appears as a numbered jumble. Press it again for a new set. Answers are hidden; Show Answers adds the original word beside each jumble.
- 4. Copy. Copy Scrambled copies the jumbled words only, one per line, so you can paste them into a worksheet. The answers are not copied, so keep your original list for the key.
How a Word Is Scrambled
The letters (or just the middle ones, in the locked modes) are shuffled with the Fisher–Yates algorithm. If the result comes out identical to the original, the tool shuffles again, up to twelve more times, so a word will nearly always look different. A word that cannot change, such as aa, or one with only one possible arrangement of the letters being shuffled, is returned as it is.
Locking letters makes the puzzle much easier because it removes possibilities. For a word with distinct letters, the number of arrangements is n!, and locking letters leaves fewer to choose from. Repeated letters cut the count further, since swapping two identical letters changes nothing.
| Word | Scramble all letters | Keep first letter | Keep first and last |
|---|---|---|---|
| elephant | 20,160 arrangements | 5,040 | 720 |
| volcano | 2,520 | 360 | 120 |
| library | 2,520 | 360 | 60 |
One possible result for volcano: clovnao with every letter free, vloacno keeping the first letter, and vcnlaoo keeping both ends. Your results will differ each time you press the button.
Making Good Scramble Puzzles
- Give a clue. A picture, a definition or a category ("a mountain that erupts") turns a guessing game into recall.
- Start easy. Use Keep first letter for younger learners and words of five or six letters, then move to full scrambles.
- Check for accidental words. A scramble can spell another word: listen can become silent. If an alternative would confuse solvers, press Scramble again, or check a doubtful word in the Anagram Solver.
- One word or phrase per line. Each word on a line is scrambled separately and the spaces stay where they are, so ice cream comes out as two jumbled words, such as eci mecra. Put each word on its own line if you want them as separate puzzle items.
- Mind the short words. A word with fewer than two movable letters is returned as it is: one-letter words in every mode, two-letter words in Keep first letter, and words of three letters or fewer in Keep first and last letters. Use Scramble all letters if short words must change.
Can You Read Scrambled Words?
A popular email claimed that people can read text with scrambled middles as long as the first and last letters stay put, and attributed the finding to Cambridge University. Matt Davis of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit traces it to an internet meme from 2003 and says it is not Cambridge research. The real study, by Rayner, White, Johnson and Liversedge (2006, Psychological Science), found there is generally a cost to reading words with letters transposed, around 11% in the figure Davis reports. Easy cases are short, predictable words and swaps of neighbouring letters. Harder cases include words whose scramble makes another real word, so do not expect the locked-end modes to be easy for every word.
Which Tool Do You Need?
| If you want… | Use |
|---|---|
| Words jumbled for students to put back in order | This Word Scrambler |
| To find the words hidden in a set of letters | Anagram Solver |
| Words hidden in a grid of letters | Word Search Generator |
| Words recalled from clues, on a numbered grid | Crossword Puzzle Generator |
| A change-one-letter chain between two words | Word Ladder Generator |
| A coded message to decode | Cryptogram Generator |
Frequently Asked Questions
- How does the word scrambler work?
- Enter one word per line and press Scramble. Each word's letters are shuffled with the Fisher–Yates algorithm. If the shuffle matches the original, it tries again up to twelve times, so every jumble should look different from its word whenever the word allows it.
- What do the keep-first-letter options do?
- Keep first letter leaves the opening letter fixed and shuffles the rest, an easier puzzle. Keep first and last letters fixes both ends and shuffles only the middle, easier still. Fewer letters move, so there are fewer possible arrangements.
- How do I make a worksheet with an answer key?
- Press Scramble, then Copy Scrambled and paste the jumbles into your document. The answers are not copied, so use your original list as the key, or press Show Answers and copy the words from the screen. Numbers on the screen match the order of your list.
- Why does a word sometimes come out unchanged?
- Some words have only one arrangement of the letters being shuffled, such as aa, or a word of one letter. Very short words in a locked mode have nothing to move, so they are left as they are. Otherwise the tool reshuffles until the result differs.
- Can I scramble sentences or phrases?
- Yes, letter by letter. Each word on a line is scrambled on its own and the spaces stay put, so a phrase keeps its word lengths. To shuffle the order of the words instead, put one word per line and use the Shuffle Lines tool.
- Is my word list uploaded anywhere?
- No. The scrambling happens in your browser and the list is not stored or sent. It is gone when you leave or reload the page.