How a Wildcard Search Actually Works
Enter a question mark (?) anywhere in your search to represent a blank tile, and the tool checks every letter of the alphabet in that position rather than making you guess which one fits. For example, searching W?RD correctly returns both WORD and WARD -- the wildcard genuinely stands in for any letter, tested systematically rather than approximated.
Why Tile Count Has to Match
The number of tiles you enter, wildcard included, has to match the length of any word the search returns. TR?ANE is six tiles (T, R, a wildcard, A, N, E), so it can only return six-letter words -- and it correctly finds RETAIN this way. An eight-letter word simply can't come from a six-tile rack, no matter how the wildcard is used.
Using a Blank with High-Value Letters
A blank pairs especially well with a high-value letter that's otherwise hard to place. QAT -- a real word for a stimulant plant chewed in parts of East Africa and the Middle East -- is a confirmed three-letter Q-without-U word in our dictionary, useful when you're holding a Q but no U. Not every word that shows up in general Scrabble discussion is necessarily in every dictionary, though: QI, for instance, isn't currently recognized by our own tool, so it's worth checking a word's validity directly rather than assuming.
(Reviewed by the UnscramblWords Team)