Find words

Fill in any combination of filters — you don't need to use all of them.

More word-solving tools

Tool

Crossword Solver

Know some letters and not others? Search by exact letter pattern.

Tool

Anagram Solver

Unscramble any set of letters into real words.

Guide

History of Crosswords

From a 1913 newspaper diamond to a daily global habit.

What is a word finder used for?

A word finder is a broader search tool than a crossword pattern solver — instead of matching an exact letter shape, it lets you search by where letters appear. That makes it useful for word games with looser constraints, like finding all valid words that start with a given prefix, or checking whether a tricky letter combination like "xyl" appears in any real word at all.

Combining filters

You can combine starts-with, ends-with, contains, and length filters in a single search. For example, searching "starts with re", "ends with ing" and "length 7" narrows results to seven-letter words such as READING, RESTING and REDOING. If a search returns too many words, add a filter; if it returns none, remove one and search again.

Worked examples

Finding words with an awkward letter group

Some letter combinations are hard to place. Put ough in “Contains” and set the length to 5. Results include COUGH, DOUGH, ROUGH and TOUGH, which is a good reminder that the same spelling can sound very different. Change the length to 7 and THROUGH appears. This is handy in word games when you hold a difficult combination and want to know what it can form.

Suffix searches

Put tion in “Ends with” and leave the length blank to see how many English words share that ending. Add a length of 6 and the list shrinks to words such as NATION and MOTION. Suffix searches help with crossword entries where you are confident about the ending but not the start, because the last few squares of long answers are often filled in first.

Checking whether a word exists

If you are unsure whether a rare combination is used at all, search for it. xyl in “Contains” returns words such as XYLEM (a plant tissue) and XYLOPHONE. If a search returns nothing, the combination is not in this dictionary, though it may still exist as a name or a phrase.

Word finder or pattern solver?

Use the word finder when you know where a group of letters appears – at the start, at the end, or somewhere in the middle. Use the crossword pattern solver when you know exact positions, such as a second letter of R and a fifth letter of T. For scrambled letters with no fixed order, use the anagram solver.

Frequently asked questions

Why does the search take longer without a length filter?

Without a length filter, the tool searches every word from 3 to 12 letters long, which means checking far more words than a single length would. Setting an exact length — or narrowing your prefix/suffix/substring — makes searches faster and more precise.

Can I search for words longer than 12 letters?

Yes — set the "Exact length" field to any number up to 21 and the search will look specifically at words of that length, including longer ones that aren't covered by the default range.

Is this the same as the crossword solver?

It's a companion tool. The crossword solver matches an exact letter-by-letter pattern (useful once you know several checked letters), while the word finder here is looser and searches by position-independent filters like prefix, suffix, and substring.