Anagram Solver

What This Anagram Solver Does

This anagram solver helps you do two main things:

• Check if two words or phrases are anagrams (they use exactly the same letters).
• Generate all permutations of a short word (up to six letters) so you can see every possible rearrangement.

It is designed as a simple, standalone tool for puzzles, word games, and curiosity about how letters can be rearranged. You can paste in phrases with spaces and punctuation, and the solver will focus on the letters only.

Quick How-To Guide

1. Enter the first word or phrase into the first box (for example, Listen).
2. Enter the second word or phrase into the second box (for example, Silent).
3. Run the check using the button on the page. The tool will tell you whether the two inputs are anagrams of each other.

If the page also offers permutation generation, you can enter a short word (up to six letters) in the relevant field and ask the solver to list all unique permutations of those letters.

Formal Definition of an Anagram

An anagram is formed by rearranging all the letters of a word or phrase to create another word or phrase, using every original letter exactly once. When we ignore spaces, punctuation, and case, the two strings contain the same multiset of letters.

Mathematically, suppose we use an alphabet (for English, the 26 lowercase letters a to z). For any string , define as the number of times character appears in . Two strings and are anagrams if and only if:

In plain language, for every letter in the alphabet, the number of times it appears in the first string must match the number of times it appears in the second string, after both have been cleaned and normalized.

How This Anagram Solver Works

Behind the scenes, the tool follows a consistent sequence of steps so that results are predictable and easy to interpret:

1. Normalize the input. Both phrases are converted to lowercase, and only alphabetic letters are kept. Spaces, punctuation, numbers, and symbols are removed before comparison.
2. Count letter frequencies. For each letter a through z, the solver counts how many times it appears in each cleaned string.
3. Compare the counts. If every letter appears the same number of times in both phrases, the tool reports that they are anagrams. If any count differs, they are not anagrams.

This approach runs in linear time with respect to the total number of characters, because each character is processed a constant number of times. It is more efficient for long phrases than sorting the letters of each string, which typically has a time complexity of .

Permutations, Factorials, and Repeated Letters

Anagrams are closely connected to permutations—different ways of ordering the same items. For a word with n distinct letters, the number of possible permutations is given by the factorial function, written and defined as:

For example, a 4-letter word with all distinct letters has:

possible permutations.

When some letters repeat, we adjust for overcounting by dividing by the factorial of each repetition count. If a word has total length and contains groups of identical letters with frequencies , the number of unique permutations is:

As an example, consider the word letter. It has 6 characters in total, with frequencies:

• t: 2 times
• e: 2 times
• l: 1 time
• r: 1 time

The number of different permutations is:

The permutation feature of this tool uses a straightforward recursive algorithm to generate all unique arrangements for short inputs. Because the number of permutations grows very quickly, the tool limits this feature to inputs of at most six letters, which caps the total at 720 permutations when all letters are distinct.

Interpreting the Results

When you submit two phrases, the solver will typically show one of two outcomes:

• “These are anagrams” (or equivalent wording) — after cleaning, both phrases have identical letter counts.
• “These are not anagrams” — at least one letter appears a different number of times in the two phrases.

If the tool supports permutation listing for a single word, it may also display:

• The total number of unique permutations, based on the length of the word and repeated letters.
• A list of all permutations for words with up to six letters.

If you enter a longer word and the page does not list permutations, that is usually due to the built-in length limit designed to keep your browser responsive.

Worked Examples

Simple word anagram

Suppose you want to check whether Listen and Silent are anagrams.

1. In the first box, type Listen.
2. In the second box, type Silent.
3. Run the anagram check.

After lowercasing and removing non-letters (there are none in this example), both become listen and silent. The letter counts match, so the solver reports that they are anagrams.

Phrase anagram with spaces and punctuation

Now consider the classic pair Astronomer and Moon starer.

1. Enter Astronomer in the first field.
2. Enter Moon starer in the second field (including the space).

The tool removes spaces and treats everything as lowercase, effectively comparing astronomer and moonstarer. All letter counts match, so these are reported as anagrams.

Permutation example for a short word

Assume the tool has a field for generating permutations, and you enter the word earth.

• The word has 5 distinct letters, so there are possible permutations.
• The solver may list permutations such as earth, hater, heart, rathe, and so on, up to 120 unique results.

If you instead enter a word like letters (7 letters), the solver may only show the total count or decline to list every permutation to avoid performance problems.

Use Cases and Comparison

This solver can support a range of everyday tasks, especially for people who enjoy word-based puzzles. The table below compares a few common use cases.

Assumptions, Limitations, and Edge Cases

To keep the solver fast, predictable, and easy to use, it makes several assumptions about your input:

• Letters only for comparison. When checking for anagrams, the tool removes any character that is not a letter (such as spaces, punctuation marks, digits, and symbols). These characters never affect the result.
• Case-insensitive. Uppercase and lowercase letters are treated as the same (for example, A and a are counted together).
• Standard English alphabet. The implementation is optimized for the 26 basic Latin letters. If you enter accented characters or non-Latin scripts, they may be dropped or normalized depending on how your browser handles them.
• Permutation length limit. For generating full permutation lists, inputs are typically restricted to at most six letters. Longer inputs would create extremely large lists that are slow to compute and difficult to display.
• Performance on very long phrases. The letter-counting algorithm is linear, so it handles long sentences reasonably well, but extremely long blocks of text may still take noticeable time to process.
• No dictionary filtering. The permutation generator does not distinguish between valid words and non-words. It simply shows every unique letter arrangement.

These constraints mean the solver is ideal for checking whether two strings have exactly the same letters and for exploring rearrangements of short words, but it is not a full-featured crossword or Scrabble dictionary engine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the solver support phrases with spaces and punctuation?

Yes. You can enter full phrases that include spaces, commas, apostrophes, and other punctuation. The solver strips out any non-letter characters before comparison, so only the letters matter.

Is the solver case-sensitive?

No. All input is converted to lowercase before analysis. LISTEN, Listen, and listen are treated as the same string.

Can I use this tool for Scrabble or Wordle?

You can use the permutation feature to see all letter rearrangements for short words, which can inspire possible plays or guesses. However, the tool does not check whether each permutation is a valid English word.

What is the maximum word length for full permutation listing?

For performance reasons, the permutation generator is normally limited to inputs of up to six letters. This keeps the maximum number of permutations to 720 and prevents your browser from freezing.

Why might I not see permutations for longer words?

Words longer than the configured limit can produce thousands or millions of permutations. To avoid excessive load and long wait times, the solver may only compute counts or perform anagram checks for these inputs, without listing every permutation.

Related Tools and Next Steps

If you are exploring word structure and letter patterns, you may also be interested in tools such as word counters, letter-frequency analyzers, or simple cipher encoders. Combining an anagram checker with those utilities can help you design puzzles, analyze text, or experiment with basic cryptographic ideas.