v1.5.0, 2023-10-02 by Robert Giordano
The Design215 Word Pattern Finder is our second word finder utility. It uses wildcards,
include, exclude, and patterns to find similar words. This utility can help with wordle, crossword puzzles,
hangman, substitution ciphers, and other word games. To unscramble words or find anagrams,
try our original word finder.
If you find a bug, or have any suggestions to make our utility better, please leave a comment below or contact us directly. We want to constantly improve our site by listening to your
feedback! =)
SCRABBLE is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada.
Scrabble rights elsewhere in the world are held by J.W. Spear and Sons, PLC.
26 Feb 2022 7:23am
"Great stuff. But how do I simply tell it to find words containing i, p and not contain o, u, n, a, d and have 7 letters? And a letter may repeat? Like STRETCH
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
1. type 7 dashes in KNOWN LETTERS, like -------
2. in CONTAINS, put ip
3. in DOES NOT CONTAIN, put ounad
It will not find STRETCH because there is no i or p"
05 Feb 2022 10:10am
"Can you provide any more info on how to use the pattern feature? Is it just token replacement? So 112233 is the same as ;;&&**?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Yes, exactly!!"
23 Jan 2022 6:33pm
"Hi, I don't understand the syntax to specify a pattern. Are detailed instructions already posted? The tips shows the pattern ;46(;88* but doesn't elaborate what it means.
For example, how would I specify a 5-letter word that must include M,I, and excludes "AOU". The first letter cannot be M, and second letter cannot be I ?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Patterns are more for solving cryptograms and ciphers. Here are the steps for your example:
1. type 5 dashes in KNOWN LETTERS, like -----
2. in CONTAINS, put mi
3. in DOES NOT CONTAIN, put aou
At this time, I don't have a way to say the first letter cannot be "m" but you can simply look at the results and ignore the ones starting with mi. The results are in alphabetical order.
There are 179 results"
03 May 2021 9:12am
"Thanks for this, my friend made a cipher and I had been trying to solve it for days before I found this. I found most of it within a couple hours of finding this website!!"
14 May 2019 4:28pm
"I tried the pattern --aabb--- and got nothing. I can think of one common word that fits, BALLOONED, plus less common HALLOOING and SWEETTALK used as a verb. Is there a restriction that you cannot use the "-" placeholder in a pattern?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
I recently edited the instructions and hopefully they are better now. I JUST fixed placeholders in the PATTERN field. I tested it with your pattern and got:
BALLOONED
COFFEEPOT
GALLOONED
GREENNESS
HALLOOING
HULLOOING
RATTOONED
SUCCEEDED
SUCCEEDER
WHEELLESS
Apparently "SWEETTALK" is not a valid Scrabble word"
28 May 2018 6:42am
"On my tablet, dash asplaceholder means I have to switch virtual keyboard.could you allow ? Say or . As placeholder?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
That's definitely a possibility. We are in the process of the upgrading the entire site for mobile so I'll keep that in mind. I might even make it so there are multiple placeholder characters."
23 Jan 2018 4:47pm
"Robert, many thanks for your amazing creation of Toolbox Utilities, which I relied on, for six years of word games and puzzle creations for Korean university English classes, until retirement recently. Your work has been a significant contribution to Education world-wide, and will also assist in tutoring homeschoolers, and helping TIMAGA [ Trump In Making America Great Again ]. Thanx Sorry that I don't use or trust social media, since a colleague had great difficulty in opting out way back."
21 Sep 2017 8:43am
"Ok I have a puzzle that my 87 year granny is working on in the local paper. We are stumped!!! The scrambled words are as followed : Singaebitrrt it has to be in two 6 letter words, the hint is, The Alaskan fishing boat captain was disoriented and needed to get his ____? Would you please help I seem to not be doing something right!! Thanks
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
The answer is "Bering Strait" but since this is a name of a location, "Bering" is not in the current word list.
In the future, I may add options where you can select additional word lists for slang, names, places, etc."
05 Oct 2016 3:01pm
"I love this! It would be perfect if you had the definition of the word or a link to the definition...that's probably too hard to do but it would be so nice if that's possible!"
14 Feb 2015 8:33am
"_ _ u p _ u _ _ o _ t a _. ans me this missing letters plzz
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
The current word list does not have names of people or places.
Here are the only 13-letter words in the list where "UP" are the 3rd and 4th letters:
acupuncturist
fluphenazines
reupholstered
stupefactions
I got these by searching for --up---------"
20 Dec 2014 9:58am
"Thanks for this great puzzle help! I would like to search for two words at once with similar or overlapping patterns, like "abcde fcdeg" is this somehow possible with this great tool?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
I might be able to add that feature in the future."
23 Nov 2013 8:55am
"Hello, great ressource. I find it very useful. However, when using patterns, a regexp option would be helpful. Say I have a pattern and suspect some letters to be within a small range. This can be done with KNOWN LETTERS, but every combo must be tested separately. Say I have pattern abccde and suspect the 1st letter to be among T, O and S and the last among E, N, R. This means 9 runs when a regexp option would require only one !"
02 Feb 2013 1:07pm
"Great site and very helpful for cryptograms. What language did use to program it? Is it perl?"
01 Nov 2012 6:19am
"Great site - use it nearly every day - seasonal word missing - HALLOWEEN - was not listed when provided the pattern RQFFBEOOM. Thought you would want to know...
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Thanks for your comment. This is one of the Scrabble word list's caveats. "Halloween", for whatever reason, is not listed as an official Scrabble Tournament word. "Halloween" IS LISTED in the "Standard" word list. I'm working on an unabridged word list that will combine the two. Some people want to know if a word is a "legal" word under Scrabble rules. Others don't care, hence the two word lists."
26 Sep 2012 8:01am
"I am SOOOOO Glad you are back - love your site. Since you have returned I am unable to get the "KNOWN LETTERS" field to work. I usually fill in the PATTERN first and run that and then see the narrowed field after entering the "KNOWN LETTERS" - doing this, the result is not changed - the KNOWN LETTERS are cleared and typing them in again and trying gives the same result. Hope this helps you find the bug - or maybe it just me - I am using Googles Chrome browser, but have seen it on IE also.
[UPDATED 31 DEC 2012]
PATTERN searches and KNOWN LETTERS now work together!! Thanks for your feedback! It helps us constantly improve our utilities.
[Original Reply from Robert Giordano, Edited]
Thanks for the compliments and we are glad to be back as well!! The Word Pattern Finder was rebuilt from scratch and it might work a bit differently.
In most cases, people use KNOWN LETTERS with Include and/or Exclude to find the words they want. I designed PATTERN searches for special cases, like solving cryptograms, finding words that start and end with the same letters, and so on. That being said, please let me know if you have any more trouble. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome. =)"
23 Sep 2012 7:46am
"I'm so glad one of my favorite sites is back! But it failed to help me find the word "buttoning" when given B---O-I-G
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Thanks for pointing this out. It was definitely a bug and we just fixed it. We had to rebuild many of our utilities because of a data center issue where we lost our main web server and our backup server. I just tried your known letters B---O-I-G and got:
balloting
beaconing
beckoning
befooling
behooving
bellowing
besmoking
besnowing
bestowing
billowing
bishoping
blazoning
bolloxing
boohooing
borrowing
bottoming
bowwowing
burrowing
buttoning <-- including this one!
Thanks again for pointing out the problem! If you see any more bugs please tell us.
cheers,
Robert"
07 Aug 2012 1:04pm
"superb site.."
09 Apr 2012 3:16am
"Many thanks for this excellent tool; fast to use and full of useful word suggestions. I particularly appreciate your Directions and Tips for entering known letters."
20 Feb 2012 10:56am
"This is the best Website on the Internet!"
01 Dec 2011 2:25am
"I love your program! I'm using it to generate word lists for my students."
23 Jun 2011 11:32am
"Only thing to make this perfect. If you do a search, but then add a letter to exclude, you can't search again until you delete a known letter, search, then put the known letter back."
11 Jun 2011 8:38pm
"SUPER DUPER tool, very useful, ill help you by clicking ads."
12 Sep 2010 12:02pm
"love it. just what i was looking for"
07 Sep 2010 11:48pm
"if you are playing a word game then nothing in this world can help much more than this tool, thanks coder."
13 Dec 2009 10:02am
"daum diz crap helpz me find my wordz faster"
26 Jun 2009 1:27pm
"This is a great tool for word games. My favorite resource!"
12 Apr 2009 4:18pm
"lovin' it"
22 Jan 2009 1:13pm
"awesome - really helpful"
11 Dec 2008 9:47am
"man this thang is whack"
22 Sep 2008 8:05pm
"great tool, used often!!! thank you"
10 Jul 2008 5:04am
"This is pretty awesome. Thank you! :)"
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