How the pattern finder works
You type a pattern, and the tool returns every word in its dictionary that fits. Letters match themselves. The order of letters matters here, so s?a?? is not the same as ??a?s. This is different from the unscrambler, which ignores order and just checks which letters you hold.
Two wildcards do the flexible work:
?matches exactly one letter. It stands in for a single unknown square.*matches any number of letters, including none at all. It can cover a whole run of blanks.
A dash - works the same as ? if you prefer typing that. The dictionary is ENABLE, a public-domain list of 172,823 lowercase English words. It has no proper nouns, hyphens or apostrophes. Results come back common words first, and the tool shows up to 500 matches.
Worked examples
Say you are stuck on a five-letter crossword answer. You know it starts with s, has a in the third spot, and ends with d. Type s?a?d and the finder returns words like stand, spade and shade. Each one fits the shape you gave.
Now try a longer pattern. Type un*ing and the * covers any run of letters between un and ing. That pattern matches unscrambling, along with undoing, unending and many others. The star can also match nothing, so un*ing would match uning if that word were in the list.
For a quick check on a common query, type s???? to see five-letter words starting with s. Or type *ing to see every word ending in ing. The finder sorts by how common each word is, so everyday words appear near the top.
Where this helps in real games
Crossword clues often give you a few crossing letters. You know the shape but not the word. The pattern finder turns those known letters into a search. Fill in what you have, use ? for each empty square, and read the matches.
Hangman works the same way. Once you have guessed a few letters, you know their positions. Type the pattern with ? for the blanks and the tool shows every word that fits. That narrows your next guess fast.
Wordle players can use it too. After a few guesses you may know one green letter and a couple of yellows. A pattern like ?a??e lists all five-letter words with a in the second spot and e in the fifth. The Wordle solver goes further and handles grey letters and double-letter rules, but the pattern finder is a quick first pass.
Scrabble and Words With Friends players can check whether a word fits a board space. If you need a word starting with qu and ending with y, type qu*y and scan the results. The Scrabble word finder and Words With Friends pages handle rack-based scoring instead.
Patterns, anagrams and scoring
The pattern finder cares about position. The anagram solver cares about using every letter exactly once, in any order. If you have a rack of letters and no idea of position, use the unscrambler. If you know where some letters go, use this page.
Scores shown on other pages use tile values. In Scrabble, quiz is 22 points face value. In Words With Friends it is 23. Board premium squares are not included. The pattern finder itself does not score words, but you can check a word's value on the how we calculate page.
One thing to know: ENABLE is close to, but not identical to, the official Scrabble and Words With Friends lists. A word found here may be rejected by a game, and a game may accept a word not found here. Treat the results as a strong guide, not a final ruling.
Tips for faster searches
- Use
?for each unknown letter when you know the exact length. - Use
*when you do not know how many letters sit in a gap. - Put known letters in their real positions. Order matters.
- Start with the most common letters you know. Results are sorted common first.
- If you get too many matches, add another known letter to the pattern.
The search runs in your browser and takes a fraction of a second. You can refine the pattern as many times as you like.