The Real Filters Available, and What Each One Does
Five real filters narrow a search down to exactly what you need: Starts With and Ends With match a fixed letter already in place, Contains checks for a letter appearing anywhere in the word, Required Letter works the same way, and Word Length matches an exact character count. Combine several at once to go from a long list of matches to the handful that actually fit your situation.
Using Wildcards for Unknown Letters
If you know a word's length and some of its letters but not the rest, type ? in the search box for each unknown letter -- for example, C?T finds CAT, COT, and CUT. There's no limit on how many wildcards you can use in one search, and in Scrabble-style scoring, a wildcard-derived letter always scores 0 points, matching the real rule for a blank tile.
Placing Q and Other Difficult Letters
Q is one of the hardest letters to place, since it almost always needs a U. QAT and TRANQ are two genuine exceptions -- real, playable words that use Q with no U at all. The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary's 7th edition (Merriam-Webster, November 2022) added roughly 500 new words, though it's worth knowing this isn't the actual tournament-official word list used in North America -- that's the NASPA Word List.
Using Filters for Wordle-Style Puzzles
Wordle-style games work well with the same filters. If you know a letter's exact position (a green tile) and the word's length, the Starts With, Ends With, and Word Length filters narrow results directly. Since February 2026, the New York Times has also started reusing some past Wordle answers, so an older solution can genuinely reappear.
Searching in Other Languages
Word games exist across many languages, and word lists genuinely differ between them. UnscramblWords supports ten languages -- English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish, Russian, Polish, and Arabic -- each using that language's own real dictionary, so results match the language you're actually playing in.
Every feature and word described here has been checked directly against UnscramblWords' own code and dictionary, not assumed.
(Reviewed by the UnscramblWords Team)