How to Scramble Words

A word scramble is a type of puzzle that's popular with kids. The letters in each word are rearranged in a random order, and the person using the puzzle has to figure out what the original word was. Three- and four-letter words are easy, but as more letters are added, the number of possible combinations grows very quickly, making the puzzle more challenging. Use shorter words to make the word scramble suitable for children, or longer ones to make it challenging for adults.

Things You'll Need

• Paper Pencil

Instructions

1. Come up with a theme. Your words could all be about an activity such as "camping," a time of day such as "evening," or any other theme you can think of. This will give people a hint, and make your word scramble puzzle more fun.

2. Write down several words that go with the theme. Generally, the longer or more obscure a word is, the harder it will be to unscramble.

3. Scramble each word. Count the letters in each word, then write a random number above each letter. For example, "stove" has five letters, so you could write:
   32514
   stove

4. Write down the letters in scrambled order on a new piece of paper. To use the example above, you would write "stove" as "vtseo."

5. Put the correct number of blanks next to each word for the person filling in the scramble to use. So for "stove" you would use five blanks. Write the theme of the word scramble on top of the page.

Tips & Warnings

• There are websites, such as the one below, that will scramble words for you automatically.