Mixed up word puzzles or anagrams often show up in quizzes and competitions where time to reach a solution quickly is of the essence. Having a few practiced strategies helps prevent just staring at the letters and hoping that they fall into place. The clues to solve an anagram are obvious but can be combined into strategies for effective anagram solution.
Don't be put off that there are up to 8,031,810,176 (Over 8 trillion) possible combination of just 7 letters.
Three clues for solving an anagram
- The answer must have the same number of letters as the clue. Longer or shorter words can be eliminated.
- All actual letters provided must form part of the answer. Rare letters (Q Z X Y K etc.) in the clue must be in the answer.
- The subject matter of the answer is sometimes provided.
Strategies for solving anagrams
A) Where the subject matter is provided take a few moments to think about answers that may fit in the topic. This will warm up and generate associations around the subject that may lead to an answer. Pre-Exercise: Think of 10 each of the dog breeds, African animals, countries, famous brands, trees, makes of car etc.
B) Pick out each unique letter and take a few moments to think of words in the subject area that might start with that letter.
Looks at the letters in different ways.
B) Write the letters in a circle to break up the visible sequences in the clue.
C) Write the letter in two groups of vowels and consonant.
Pick out common patterns as once identified the number of remanning letters to be placed is reduced.
D) Look for subwords that might present in the subject area. If solving anagrams of places look for road, street, lake, town, city etc.
E) Look for common word starts eg pre, un, st, dis
F) Look for common word middles such as ph, sh, qu
G) Look for common word endings such as ing, ed, tion, ness, ly
H) Become familiar with the frequencies of letter pairs and triples as used in simple decoding techniques
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| Letter and word frequencies in Tolstoy War and Peace |
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