How to Use the Internet Anagram Server to Find Anagrams

An anagram is the rearrangement of the letters of a word or phrase into a new word or phrase. The anagram of a phrase need not have the same number of words as the original. It is also common for punctuation marks to be added or removed in order for the anagram to be linguistically correct. Of particular interest are anagrams which are humorous or clever, ideally parodying the original word or phrase. This article shows you how to use the Internet Anagram Server free website to have fun finding your own original anagrams.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 
   Website of the Internet Anagram Server

   Go to the website of the Internet Anagram Server, linked in the Resource section. For inspiration, start by looking at the Anagram Hall of Fame link. You'll see a list of extremely clever anagrams such as "Clint Eastwood = Old West Action" and "Statue of Liberty = Built to Stay Free." Some of the original phrases are quite lengthy, and it is astonishing how they are anagrammed into equally lengthy phrases which make grammatical sense, and relate to the original phrase.

2. 
   The Anagram Times page

   For more inspiration, click the link for The Anagram Times. In this section, actual recent news headlines are anagrammed in humorous and clever ways which parody the original headline. They are truly amazing to see. The headlines link to the news stories on various websites. There is a link to view archives.

3. 
   Anagram Hall of Fame Excerpt

   Before searching for your own anagrams (described below), it's important to understand that not all words or phrases will have any anagrams at all. Most individual words will not have anagrams, especially if they are short or contain rare letters like Q, X, Z, and J. The same may be the case with short phrases. Even if you do find anagrams for such, they may not be in the slightest way humorous or clever. If you run into trouble with a particular word or phrase, try adding additional words so that the computer has more letters to work with.

4. 
   Laurence N Zafran = Annual Fern Craze

   As an example, there are no anagrams for my name, "Larry Zafran." I then tried my real name of "Laurence Zafran." Of the anagrams that were returned, the best one I saw was "Arcane Lunar Fez." While it might make some semantic sense (especially in the context of a game like World of Warcraft), it's not really funny, and in no way relates to me. I then tried including my middle initial as in, "Laurence N. Zafran," and the best I saw was "Annual Fern Craze," which would have worked out nicely if I was a botanist. You may have better or worse luck with your name. You could try adding prefixes like Mr. or Ms. to see if that helps, or perhaps a suffix such as PhD.

5. 
   The Advanced Anagramming Page

   It's best to go straight to the Advanced Anagramming page, since this will give you full control of your searches. See the picture at left. Enter the word or phrase to be anagrammed. If the server is busy, you might be told that a character limit is currently in effect. You can choose how many anagrams to display, but if you pick too high a number, you may encounter a long delay. All of the text boxes are optional, and you can leave them blank if you choose.
   
   If desired, enter the maximum number of words for your anagram. This is useful if most your anagrams look like "A Be Of Qua In Turtle." If you already see a word that can be made from letters of your phrase which you want your anagram to include, you can specify it. You can similarly exclude words. You can set the minimum and maximum letters in each word of your anagram, which is useful if you see that the anagrams contain long and obscure words, or too many short words as above. You can indicate if repeat occurrences of a word are OK.
   
   You can also request that only a list of "candidate words" are returned, as opposed to full anagrams. This is useful if you want to get an idea of the words that can be made from your original word or phrase. The problem is that for some of these words, the remaining letters may not be such that they rearrange into words themselves.

6. 
   Anagram List

   Click Find Anagrams to have the computer search. Depending on how many results you requested, there could be a delay. The list will be sorted somewhat alphabetically, but not strictly so. Many of the anagrams returned will simply not be useful at all, since they contain short and/or obscure words. Note that only one arrangement of each anagram will be returned. You'll have to rearrange each one in your mind to see if other word orders make sense. You will likely have to click the Back button on your browser to experiment with other settings. For example, you might want to specify the inclusion or exclusion of words, or the maximum number of words for your anagram.

7. 
   A Turtle Is Very Slow = I Love Trust Lawyers

   After trying anagrams based on my name as described above, I tried the phrase "A turtle is very slow." The best anagram I came up with was "I love trust lawyers." The problem is that although the sequence of words makes sense, it in no way relates to the original phrase, and it even warrants an off-topic discussion about oxymorons.

8. 
   Yum-O

   I had better luck finding anagrams for "I love Rachael Ray." In particular, I found "All ivory earache," and "Caviar hoe, really." Even R-Squared herself would say, "How awesome is that?!"

9. 

   Perhaps most interesting of all was finding anagrams for "eHow earnings algorithm." Among the better results were, "Looming shareware thing," "Homegrown hints regalia," "Arrange while smoothing," "Ornamental whoreish gig," and perhaps best of all, "Whoa, riling hatemongers!"
   
   Have fun finding your own anagrams. Post your best ones as comments!

Resources

• The Internet Anagram Server
• View Author's Profile
• Other Articles by This Author

[cherold598]

on 3/15/2009 Thanks for the fun tips and resource about how to use the Internet anagram server to find anagrams. Anagrams are so much fun! 5*

[AuntieAndrea]

on 3/15/2009 Anagrams are fun =Are Fan Sugar Man