Word Scrambler

Scramble. Letters are kept and non-letters are removed. The remaining letters are shuffled with a fixed sequence from the seed and the word, so the same word and the same seed always rebuild the same jumble. Garden and mix is gedanr. A different seed is a different order. The shuffle is Fisher-Yates. It can, rarely, leave a word looking unsorted if the draw says so. That is still a shuffle.

Unscramble. The letters are sorted and compared with each dictionary word sorted the same way. Garden, orange, yellow, purple, stream, bridge, castle, apple, baker, crayon, planet and silver are the whole list. nedrag sorts to the same key as garden, so the hit is garden. A jumble of letters that match none of the twelve returns none. This is not a crossword dictionary. A real list has tens of thousands of words. The limit is stated in the result so a miss is not mistaken for “not a word”.

Case. Input is lowered. The results are lower case. An apostrophe is stripped with the other non-letters.

Use unscramble when you already have a jumble and you want to know if it is one of the twelve. Use scramble when you want to make a jumble you can reproduce. Write the seed next to a classroom jumble or the next class will get a different order from the same word. If none comes back, the letters may still be an English word that is not on this list. Look it up in a fuller list. Do not treat none as a spelling verdict.

Garden is on the list, which is why nedrag resolves. A scramble of garden with the seed mix is gedanr, and sorting gedanr returns to the same key as garden, so the round trip works for that pair. A scramble of a word that is not on the list still produces a jumble, and unscramble of that jumble returns none. Both results are correct. The jumble is a shuffle. The none is a dictionary miss. Teach that distinction before you use the tool as a puzzle: the puzzle is only fair if you scrambled a word from the twelve. Otherwise the solver is being asked to invent a word the page will not confirm. Write the twelve words on the board if the class needs to know the closed set.

Garden, orange, yellow, purple, stream, bridge, castle, apple, baker, crayon, planet and silver are easy to say and easy to sort by hand, which is why they are the closed set. Sorting nedrag by hand gives a, d, e, g, n, r. Sorting garden gives the same. That is the whole algorithm. You can teach it without the page. The page is the check, and the seed is the way a jumble stays still while you teach. A student who changes the seed has a new puzzle, not a broken one. Say the seed aloud so the next class rebuilds gedanr and not a new jumble.

Garden shuffled with mix

Inputs: Word: garden | Mode: scramble | Seed: mix

Leave the word as garden, the mode on scramble and the seed as mix, then press Run. The jumble is gedanr.

Result: Scramble: gedanr Seed: mix Letters: garden

Those letters back to garden

Inputs: Word: nedrag | Mode: unscramble | Seed: mix

Type nedrag, set the mode to unscramble and leave the seed as mix, then press Run. The hit is garden.

Result: Unscramble: garden Letters: nedrag

Why did garden become gedanr?

That is the shuffle for the seed mix. Another seed is another order.

Will unscramble solve a crossword?

Only if the answer is one of the twelve words. Otherwise the result is none.

Does unscramble use the seed?

No. It only compares sorted letters with the list.

Are capitals kept?

No. The word is lowered before either mode runs.

Can the shuffle look unsorted?

Yes. A fair shuffle may leave letters in order. It is still the draw for that seed.

Is the word uploaded?

No. Both modes run in the browser.