Quick answer
What is an anagram?
Quick answer
What is an anagram?
An anagram is a word or phrase formed by rearranging all the letters of another, using each letter exactly once. LISTEN and SILENT are anagrams of each other, as are ENLIST, TINSEL and INLETS, which all use the letters E, I, L, N, S and T.
In more detail
The defining constraint is completeness: every letter must be used, and none may be reused. A word built from only some of the letters is not an anagram, which is what separates an anagram solver from a general unscrambler.
Anagrams are a staple of cryptic crosswords, where the clue contains both the letters to rearrange and an indicator word suggesting disorder, such as broken, confused, mixed or wild.
Most letter combinations have no anagrams at all. Anagram-rich sets are built almost entirely from common letters, which is why the classic examples reuse the same handful of tiles.