Unscramble
To unscramble is to restore a scrambled word or phrase to its original form. For example, the word "cmpoture" is a scrambled English word. Unscrambling this word by arranging the letters in a different order gives you the word "computer."
Use our scramble and unscramble tool to scramble or unscramble any computer-related word.
Possible combinations in a scrambled word
The number of possible ways a word can be scrambled depends on how many letters are in it. For example, a two-letter word with two unique letters can be scrambled in only two ways. However, the word "computer" has eight unique letters, which means each can be in eight different positions. To determine the number of possible combinations, use the factorial of the number of letters, so "8!" or "fact(8)." The long-form is shown below.
8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1 = 40,320
As you can see, the word "computer" with eight unique letters can be scrambled 40,320 different ways.
When dealing with a word containing repeated letters, the math becomes a little more complicated. For example, with the word "programming," count how many letters are in the word, which is 11. Next, look for repeating letters, which are two r's, two g's, and two m's. Using this information, the math formula becomes the following formula.
11!/2!2!2!
or in long form:
11*9*8*7*6*5*4*3*2*1/2*2*2
which ends up being:
39,916,800/8 = 4989600
So, the word "programming" with eleven letters and three duplicated letters can be scrambled 4,989,600 different ways.