Word Finder

Help for bee mode:

Enter your required letters and your other letters. (For the NYT Spelling Bee, this will be the center letter and the surrounding letters, respectively.)

Choose the word list from the dropdown.

• Usual suspects is my own short, curated list of once-bitten-twice-shy values from previous Bees.
• Long list contains over 300,000 words, not all of which are in the NYT Spelling Bee. (That is, this app can show words that the NYT Spelling Bee doesn’t accept.)
• You can use the 2K through 40K lists to adjust whether or not to see less-common words.

The output shown will include all words from the selected word list which contain only your required letters and your other letters:

• If the required letter is P and the other letters are AELM, then you’ll see PALM and PALE but not MEAL.
• If the required letter is M and the other letters are AELP, then you’ll see MALL and MEAL but not PALE.
• If the required letters are left empty and the other letters are AELPM, then you’ll see words including MALL, MEAL, PALE, MAPLE, and EEL.

You can further restrict your results by setting minimum and maximum word lengths.

Help for pattern mode:

Enter your desired letters in the Letters field.

Select the word list you want to search in.

You can use a . as a wildcard to match any single letter. For example, LE.T matches LEFT, LENT, LEST, etc.

You can use a * as a wildcard to match zero or more of any letter. For example:

• OBOLUS shows the one word OBOLUS, as a dictionary lookup
• THR* shows all words that begin with THR
• *EST shows all words that end with EST
• TH*TH shows all words that begin and end with TH and
• *NIMB* shows all words that have the sequence NIMB anywhere within.

You can further restrict your results by setting minimum and maximum word lengths.

Help for anagram mode:

Enter your desired letters in the Letters field.

Select the word list you want to search in.

Results shown will be anagrams of the letters you provide. For example, ELATES will match SEALET but not ELATE or SEALETS.

Some words with many anagrams include STOP, SLATE, PEARS, and TRIANGLE.

Help for random-word mode:

Select the word list.

Select how many words to generate at a time.

Use the Generate button to get a new random sample.

Help for Jabberwocky mode:

Select the word list.

Select how many words to generate at a time.

Select the n for n-grams: the higher the n, the more closely the emitted words will resemble those in the word list. The words produced will be created by splicing together parts of real words in word list.

Use the Generate button to get a new random sample.

(The name is taken from Lewis Carroll’s famous poem Jabberwocky. See also Finnegans Wake for a work that uses many more spliced words.)