Words With the Most Anagrams in English
Some sets of letters are far more generous than others. Rearrange the letters of STOP and you get six common words; rearrange XYLEM and you get one. We searched our dictionary of about 168,000 English words to find the letter sets that make the most words, counting only everyday words most people would recognise.
Four-letter champions
These four-letter sets each make five or six common words:
| Letters | Words |
|---|---|
| O P S T | STOP, SPOT, TOPS, POTS, OPTS, POST |
| A E S T | EAST, SEAT, EATS, TEAS, SETA, ATES |
| A E R S | EARS, ARES, SERA, ARSE, ERAS, SEAR |
| A E M N | NAME, MEAN, AMEN, MANE, NEMA |
| A E M T | TEAM, MEAT, MATE, TAME, META |
| A I L R | RAIL, LIAR, LAIR, LIRA, RIAL |
Five-letter champions
The best five-letter set is E I M S T, which makes ITEMS, TIMES, MITES, EMITS and SMITE. Close behind are the letters of LEAST (LEAST, TALES, STEAL, SLATE, STALE) and of TRACE (TRACE, REACT, CRATE, CATER, CARET).
Six and seven letters
At six letters, the standout is A C E R S T, which rearranges into seven everyday words: TRACES, REACTS, CASTER, CRATES, CATERS, CARTES, RECAST. At seven letters, the letters of RESPECT give RESPECT, SPECTER, SPECTRE and SCEPTRE.
Why these letters win
Look at what the champions share: they are built from the most common letters in English, especially A, E, R, S and T. These letters combine easily in many orders, so a set made only of them tends to spell several words at once. Sets with rare letters like J, Q, X or Z almost never have anagrams, because those letters fit in very few positions.
Anagrams in word games
- Scrabble and Words With Friends: a rack made of common letters is a rack with many playable words. The six letters of A-C-E-R-S-T are a classic bingo stem.
- The Countdown Conundrum is a single nine-letter anagram; spotting that a set of letters can rearrange is the whole skill.
- Crosswords often hinge on anagrams, flagged by clue words like "mixed", "shuffled" or "confused".
Want to see every word hidden in a set of letters? Enter them into our anagram solver. For the wordplay behind all this, read our history of anagrams.
Word counts come from our own dictionary (the public-domain ENABLE word list) and show common words only; a larger dictionary would add rarer anagrams.
Related reading: History of anagrams · Scrabble bingo stems
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