Pangram Solver

How to use the solver

Click the centre tile (the highlighted one in the middle of the board) and type the letter your puzzle marks as mandatory. Then fill in the six outer tiles with the rest of the letters, in any order, use Tab or the arrow keys to move between tiles. The word list updates after every keystroke, there is no search button to click, and you don't need to finish typing all 7 letters before results start appearing: even a centre letter plus one or two outer letters is enough to narrow the dictionary down.

1. Type the centre (mandatory) letter into the highlighted middle tile.
2. Type the six outer letters into the surrounding tiles, in any order.
3. Read the matching words below, pangrams are listed first and marked with a gold badge.
4. Click any word to copy it, or press Reset all letters to start a new puzzle.

Reading the ring-shaped board

The 7 tiles are arranged as two rows of two outer letters, one row of two outer letters plus the highlighted centre tile in the middle, and a final row of two more outer letters, an approximation of the familiar ring-around-a-centre shape this puzzle format uses. The centre tile is visually distinct (a filled accent color instead of an outline) precisely because it behaves differently from the other six: it's the one letter that's mandatory in every single valid word, while the six outer letters are simply available to use, none of them required individually. Tab or the arrow keys move focus around the ring in the same visual order the tiles are laid out in, so touch-typing all 7 letters in one pass, without reaching for the mouse, works the same way whether you start from the top-left tile or click directly into the centre first.

What counts as a valid word

A word matches if it is at least 4 letters long, uses only the 7 letters you entered, and contains the centre letter at least once. Letters can repeat within a single word: once a letter is one of your 7, you can use it as many times as needed inside one answer, so a puzzle containing the letter T can still match a word like "tattoo" even though the puzzle only has one T tile. A word that uses every one of the 7 letters at least once, not just the centre one, is a pangram, and pangrams are worth extra points. See the worked examples page for real letter sets and real results showing exactly how this plays out, including a case with several pangrams in a single puzzle and a case with zero matches at all.

How the point total is calculated

Each 4-letter word is worth 1 point, flat, no matter how many of its letters repeat. Longer words are worth 1 point per letter, so a 6-letter word is worth 6 points and a 9-letter word is worth 9. Any pangram gets a flat +7 bonus on top of its length score, which is why a long pangram can be worth considerably more than its length alone suggests. The running total shown above the word list adds up every match currently on screen, so you can see at a glance how close you are to a strong score before checking against an official app or your own puzzle's answer key.

A closer look: how one pangram scores 19 points

Take the letters A, C, T, I, O, N as the six outer tiles and L as the centre letter. Among the 96 words that match, the word CONCILIATION stands out: it's 12 letters long and uses every one of the 7 allowed letters at least once (repeating several of them, including C, I, O, and N), which makes it both a valid word and a pangram. Its score works out to 19 points total: 12 points for its length, plus the flat 7-point pangram bonus on top. Shorter pangrams from the same puzzle score less in absolute terms but still carry the same +7 bonus, COALITION (9 letters) scores 16, and LOCATION (8 letters) scores 15. Meanwhile an ordinary word from the same puzzle, like CALL, only touches 3 of the 7 letters and scores a flat 1 point, the minimum-length floor, with no bonus at all. The full walkthrough, including how the results narrow in as fewer than all 7 letters are typed, is on the examples page.

Why some very obscure words are missing

The dictionary behind this tool is a large, general-purpose English word list, pre-filtered specifically for this puzzle format (see the word list source page for the full sourcing and filtering explanation), not the exact curated list any specific puzzle publisher uses internally. That means the vast majority of everyday answers show up correctly, but the occasional rare, archaic, or publisher-specific accepted word may not appear, and conversely a handful of technically valid dictionary words may show up that a stricter, hand-curated puzzle would not accept. Treat the list as a strong starting point and a fast way to double-check a guess, rather than a guaranteed official answer key for any one publisher's daily puzzle.

Tips for finding every pangram faster

Pangrams are the highest-value words in almost every letter-grid puzzle of this style, so it's worth developing a quick routine for spotting them. Start by scanning the word list for the longest entries first, since a pangram has to be at least 7 letters long (one occurrence of each of the 7 letters, at minimum), so anything shorter can be ruled out immediately. If the results feel long and hard to scan, narrow the puzzle down mentally: temporarily treating a rarer letter (a Q, X, Z, or J, for instance) as "the one to build around" often surfaces the pangram-friendly words near the top of the list, since far fewer common words use those letters at all, which makes the remaining candidates easier to eyeball. Finally, remember that a pangram doesn't have to use each letter exactly once, a word that repeats several letters while still touching all 7 distinct ones still counts in full, and is often longer and higher-scoring than a pangram that uses each letter only a single time. The gold-highlighted pangram badge in the results makes these easy to spot at a glance once the board is filled in, so there's rarely a need to check candidates by hand once the list is in front of you. If you're stuck on a specific day's puzzle and want to compare notes on typical letter patterns, the examples page walks through several real puzzles start to finish.

How this compares to typing letters into a search engine

A plain web search for a specific 7-letter combination usually turns up other people's forum posts asking about that exact day's puzzle, or general "how do pangrams work" explainer pages, rather than an actual filtered word list for your letters. This tool skips that detour: the matching happens directly against a real 47,721-word dictionary in your own browser the moment you finish typing, so there's no need to phrase a search query, click through search results, or wait for a page to load a fresh answer for every new puzzle. It also works the same way for any 7-letter combination, not just today's, so a letter set from a previous day, a friend's puzzle, or one you're just curious about works exactly as well as the current one, and nothing about which letters you type is ever sent anywhere, see the privacy page for the full detail on that.

Why a client-side tool instead of an account and a saved history

Some letter-puzzle helpers ask for an account so they can save a history of past puzzles, streaks, or personal statistics. This tool deliberately doesn't: every match is computed locally, in your own browser, against a dictionary file that loads once per visit, so there's no server-side database of anyone's puzzle history to build, secure, or eventually get things wrong about. The trade-off is that there's no cross-device sync or long-term streak tracking, but the upside is that using the tool never requires creating a login, remembering a password, or trusting a third party with a record of every puzzle you've ever solved. The one piece of state that is kept, your current 7 letters, lives only in your own browser's local storage so the board survives a page reload, and it's gone the moment you press Reset or clear your browser's site data. See the privacy policy for the full, itemized list of what is and isn't collected.

Works the same on a phone, a tablet, or a desktop

The board and results list are built to work identically regardless of screen size: on a phone, the ring of 7 tiles is sized for a thumb, with each tile meeting the standard minimum touch-target size so a fast-typing thumb doesn't miss and hit the wrong letter. On a desktop, the same layout supports full keyboard navigation, Tab moves forward through the tiles in the same visual ring order they're laid out in, and the arrow keys move a step at a time, so a puzzle can be typed in without ever reaching for a mouse or touching the screen. Dark mode follows the same toggle used across the rest of the site (visible in the header on every page), and the choice is remembered for your next visit the same way the puzzle letters are, entirely in your own browser, never on a server.