Someone once said, “All the life’s wisdom can be found in anagrams. Anagrams never lie.”
An anagram is direct word switch or word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; for example, the word anagram can be rearranged into “nag a ram”.
Anagrams are often used as a form of mnemonic device.
Anagrams are in themselves a recreational activity, but they also make up part of many other games, puzzles and game shows. The Jumble is a puzzle found in many newspapers requiring the unscrambling of letters to find the solution.
Anagrams are not to be confused with palindromes (a word, phrase, or sequence that reads the same backward as forward), spoonerisms, acronyms, or other word plays.
- “Earth” is an anagram of “heart”
- An anagram for “Alice Cooper” is “A cool recipe”
- “General”, “enlarge”, and “Al Green” are all anagrams of each other
- “Axl Rose” is an anagram of “Oral Sex”
- “Dormitory” becomes “Dirty Room”
- “Santa” becomes “Satan”
Solving Anagrams can be tough at times, but it’s also fun and great exercise for the mind!>
Try It Out. Ready to play with words?
What other words can you make with your name?
While you can Google (search) for anagrams and anagram solvers, my favorites are Internet Anagram Server online and Anagram-solver.net which also provides links to the word results. It can take a few seconds to get results, be patient. With the latter, you can have even more fun with the answers that contain only some of the letters feature.
For example, when I typed Enrico (my full name) into the search box, I found the following fun anagrams:
- Coiner
- Ice Nor
- Nice Or
- Rice On
- Rice No
- Rico En
- Rencio
Fun anagrams for Costa Rica:
- Cacorista
- Cascatori
- Castorica
- Cocastria
- Scorciata
- Scotia Arc
- Stracocia
- Coca Stair
- Rica Tacos
- A Coca Stir
Can you solve these? No cheating. (Hint: Costa Rica provinces)
