Famous Anagrams, Word Pairs and How They Are Made
From listen and silent to a 17th-century scientific secret, a tour of well-known anagrams and what makes a good one.
An anagram rearranges every letter of a word or phrase to make another. The idea is simple, and the best examples feel almost like magic, because the new phrase seems to describe the original. Here is a tour of well-known examples, a bit of history, and what separates a clever anagram from a merely correct one. Every pair below has been checked letter for letter.
Single-word anagrams
The classic family of six letters is listen, silent, enlist and tinsel, all made from the same L, I, S, T, E and N. Other sets that appear again and again in puzzle books:
- evil, vile, veil and live
- stressed and desserts, a reversal that has become a favourite joke
- plates, staple, pastel, pleats, petals and septal
- angel, angle and glean
- elbow, below and bowel
Phrases that describe their source
The anagrams people remember are the ones where the result comments on the original. These pairs all use exactly the same letters:
| Original | Anagram |
|---|---|
| dormitory | dirty room |
| astronomer | moon starer |
| the eyes | they see |
| schoolmaster | the classroom |
| conversation | voices rant on |
| a gentleman | elegant man |
| a decimal point | I'm a dot in place |
| the Morse code | here come dots |
| Statue of Liberty | built to stay free |
| eleven plus two | twelve plus one |
The last one is a favourite because it is also true arithmetic: eleven plus two and twelve plus one are both thirteen.
Anagrams in fiction
One of the best-known uses of an anagram in popular fiction is in the second Harry Potter book, where the name Tom Marvolo Riddle is rearranged to spell I am Lord Voldemort. It works because the letters match exactly, and the name was designed so that readers can solve it themselves. Detective stories and puzzle games use the same trick, because a name that unscrambles into a confession is a clue a reader can solve for themselves.
A scientific secret: Hooke's anagram
Anagrams were once a way to claim a discovery without giving it away. In 1676 the English scientist Robert Hooke published the letter string ceiiinosssttuv. Two years later he revealed its meaning: ut tensio, sic vis, Latin for "as the extension, so the force". It is the law of springs that still carries his name. Publishing the scrambled version first let him record that he had the idea while keeping it private until he was ready. The letters match the Latin phrase exactly.
Anagrams in cryptic crosswords
Cryptic crosswords use anagrams constantly. A clue contains the letters to rearrange (the fodder), a word signalling that they should be mixed up (the indicator), and a definition of the answer. Indicators are words that suggest disorder or change: broken, confused, wild, mixed, shattered, novel, drunk. For example, in the clue "Wild listen is quiet (6)" the word wild is the indicator, listen is the fodder, is is just a link, and quiet is the definition. Rearranging LISTEN gives SILENT. When you are stuck on a crossword answer, the fastest check is to enter the fodder into a solver and look for words of the right length.
What makes a good anagram?
- It uses every letter exactly once. That is the definition, and it is what makes anagrams hard to fake.
- The result is a real phrase. Strings of unrelated short words feel forced.
- It says something. The best ones comment on the original, like dormitory and dirty room.
- It is short. Long anagrams hold more letters and so give more room to cheat on meaning.
Making your own
Start with a name or a short phrase you care about. Write the letters out, and look for the common endings and word shapes covered in the unscrambling guide. Use the solver's exact-anagram mode to list every single word that uses all your letters, then try combining shorter words to cover what is left. Expect to try many dead ends. Spaces, capitals and punctuation do not count, so you are free to rearrange only the letters.