Worksheet preview
Checking the scramble…
| No. | Word | Scrambled | Check |
|---|
Paste this week’s spelling words, sight words or vocabulary, choose how hard the scramble is, and print student sheets with a matching answer key — or download a vector PDF. Up to 30 different sheets so neighbours get different puzzles. Free, no sign-up, made in your browser.
| No. | Word | Scrambled | Check |
|---|
Letters only move inside their own word. Spaces, hyphens and apostrophes stay where they are, so sea turtle stays two words. Every scramble is checked: it must differ from the real word and from every other word on your list, and it avoids spelling a common word such as COULD for CLOUD when the level allows another order (why that matters).
| Level | What moves | BUTTERFLY becomes | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | Only the middle letters. First and last stay. | BRELUTFTY | Early readers, new spelling words |
| Medium | Everything after the first letter. | BYFTLTUER | Weekly spelling practice |
| Hard | Every letter can move, including the first. | TYRLTUBEF | Review, early finishers, older students |
Very short words cannot keep both ends in place, so on Easy a word like cat keeps only its first letter. A word whose letters are all the same, such as I or zz, has no other order; it is left off the sheet and named in the word list panel.
Set Different sheets to make up to 30 versions at once. Each one gets its own sheet number, and with Mixed per sheet the word order changes too, so students sitting side by side get different puzzles.
Answer key pages come after the student sheets. Answers are grouped by sheet number and listed in worksheet order, with the scrambled letters in grey so you can check quickly.
Keep the word list and the sheet number printed at the top. The same words, settings and number always produce the same sheet. Your last list and settings are also kept in this browser.
Most teachers use a word scramble with the list the class is already learning. Paste the week’s spelling list exactly as you would write it on the board, one word per line. For a spelling test review, choose Medium and Letter boxes: the first letter and the number of boxes give students something to check their answer against, without giving the word away.
For sight words with beginning readers, keep the list short — with the Word bank on, 16 words fit on one sheet in two columns, or 8 in one column — and choose Easy, which leaves the first and last letters in place. The word bank lets children match the jumbled letters to a word they can read; remove it the next week. Very short words cannot keep both ends in place: on Easy a three-letter word such as the keeps only its first letter, and a four-letter word has only one possible scramble, so every sheet in a class set shows it the same way. Two-letter words like on and no can only turn into each other; the checker flags that so you can drop one.
For vocabulary in science or social studies, add a short clue after a bar, as in ORBIT | The path around a planet, and tick Clues under each word. Students then have to know the meaning, not just rearrange letters.
For a weekly routine, eight ways to practice spelling words compares scrambles with other methods by prep time and shows one list made into a scramble, a crossword and a sentence sheet. Ready lists with answers: Christmas and winter, baby shower and bridal shower and wedding.
19 word lists with a clue for every word (except Tricky spellings, which has none). Each link opens the list in the maker above, where you can edit it, choose the level and print. Before you print any list, read which words can be unscrambled two ways: CLOUD is also COULD, and SKATES is also STAKES and STEAKS.
How to use them: eight ways to practice spelling words.
With answers and levels compared: Christmas word scramble · Valentine’s Day word scramble.
Party guides: baby shower · bridal shower and wedding.
Yes. Each word of a phrase is scrambled separately and spaces stay in place. Keep entries to 45 characters so they fit the answer space. Capital letters can give names away, so choose ABC or abc under Letters.
Words whose letters cannot be rearranged (one letter, or the same letter repeated) are left out, and lines with no letters or more than 45 characters are skipped. The word list panel names each one with its line number.
Letter boxes show how many letters the answer has and help younger children space their writing. A write-on line is harder and suits longer words.
The PDF uses the built-in Helvetica font, which covers English and Western European letters such as é, ñ and ü. Letters outside that set appear as “?” in the PDF; the panel warns you, and Print keeps them because it uses your browser's fonts.
No. Scrambling, the preview and the PDF are all made by this page in your browser. Your last list and settings are saved in your browser's local storage so they are still here next time. See the privacy notice.
Yes — set Different sheets to up to 30; see Class sets and answer keys above.
Yes — the sentence scramble maker on this site keeps each word intact and mixes up the word order, so students rebuild the sentence and write it out. It has three levels of its own, plus class sets and an answer key.