This article is all about unscrambling words that have been cleverly scrambled by some wordsmith for your preoccupation.
The scrambled word game that’s printed in newspapers all around the world, has been in existence for ages. It’s as popular as the crosswords throughout the world. The game is probably as old as words themselves. It can be a nice party game. Since time immemorial, people have enjoyed playing with words and playing word games like these.
People who are already good at unscrambling words will probably say that there’s nothing here to be taught! There is partial truth in that statement. Nothing can really be taught, but it can be learned! Learning through experience is the only way to move forward in anything. As you approach something completely unknown, at first you go by a trial and error method to solve it. At the start you rarely have any success. Persistence is the key. Through your mistakes, you learn and modify your method. Slowly, as you go on rectifying your mistakes and think more creatively, you start having fun!
All I plan to achieve through this Plentifun article is show some of my own approaches to unscrambling words. They work for me and may work for you too. Still, they’ll certainly put you on the track to find your own technique. The only thing to learn really in life is how to think on your own! Unscrambling words is a game. Every game has tips and tricks which can get you ahead in its play, but to become a ‘master unscrambler’, you have to do more than that! Without further ado, let’s get down to brass tacks and see how words can be easily unscrambled.
Tips on Unscrambling Words
Here are some tips on unscrambling words for beginners of the game, who are eager to get better at it. Unscrambling words is all about looking for word patterns that make sense.
Tip 1: Improve your Vocabulary and Word Store!
The ‘Scramblers’ who design the scramble game, may scramble any words that exist in the English language. It’s not possible to know every word in the Webster’s English dictionary, but enhancing your word bank certainly helps. Personally, I enjoy reading a dictionary. Other than making you better at unscrambling, knowing more words also helps you to be very specific about what you are saying.
A dictionary is a necessary tool for unscrambling words! Sometimes, you may try out various permutations and combinations and form a word, which may leave you in doubt whether it is a word! That is when the dictionary comes in handy. I have found new words this way, which I never even knew existed. So unscrambling words is not only fun, it helps you in learning new words too.
Now, how do you take advantage of your word store? Firstly, look at the scrambled words. Don’t just look, but observe. Take in the pattern. Your brain will automatically start scanning your word store when it sees the scrambled words. Look for repetitions of certain letters and the combinations of letters. That itself narrows down the possibilities for you.
Tip 2: Know the Anatomy of Words!
You need to have an understanding of the ‘anatomy of words’, if you get what I am saying. By that, I mean, you must understand the structure of words. No word can be complete without a vowel (‘a,e,i,o,u’). There are a very few exceptions to the fact, and of course you will definitely recognize a word without a vowel, very easily. So in the scrambled word, put the vowels in between. Vowels gel consonants together. Remember that!
Keep rearranging the letters in the word, starting with different consonants and look for patterns! Any type of problem solving is nothing, but looking for patterns that fit. Our brain is a neural network that learns and remembers patterns. It is all about using your brain power. All our understanding, memory or whatever you may call it, is a pattern of interconnected patterns. To recognize or understand something, you have to make the connection of that new thing with your preformed patterns. The patterns have linkages of different kinds, audio-visual, verbal etc. When you understand something or recognize a new word, you have connected a pattern together.
Tip 3: Keep Scrambling till it’s Unscrambled!
The last tip is, keep scrambling the letters till they make sense. That is, persistently try newer combinations of letters, systematically. Sometimes, that’s what you have to do when, the word turns out to be something almost beyond your intuitive reasoning. After all intuition is also an acquired habit created through persistence.
Tip 4: Brute Force
If in spite of rearranging some of the words, you find it hard to guess what it’s exactly, there is the ‘Brute Force‘ method you can try out. Take a piece of paper and systematically write down all the possible word permutations that can occur through rearrangement of the letters. Refer a dictionary and see if any of the words created actually exist. Work through and check all the combinations. One of them is bound to be the right one.
The only way of getting better at unscrambling words, is to practice doing the same. Try unscrambling these scrambled words. Here is a ten word ‘Scramble Challenge’.
- GYUOTR
- TLBUSE
- RENEES
- YRALCVIONAT
- TECIDE
- NINTSTCI
- NETVCIREL
- IEINSICLPD
- ROUMH
- EKROJ
unscrambled version
- YOGURT
- SUBTLE / BUSTLE
- SERENE
- CLAIRVOYANT
- DECEIT
- INSTINCT
- VENTRICLE
- DISCIPLINE
- HUMOR
- JOKER
That’s all folks. Unscrambling words is an art and the key to mastering an art is love. You must love words to get better at unscrambling them. That’s the key to it!
