Anagrams

An anagram is a rearrangement of all of the letters in a word or phrase to form a new word or phrase. Ideally, the resulting word or phrase is a comment on or clue to the original word or phrase. Here’s an example from Tumblr user piecesofgreat:

The National Puzzlers’ League maintains a list of the best anagrams invented by members. For help in creating anagrams, you may want to make use of an anagram generator, like the one at wordplays.com.

Anagram Puzzles

You can make an anagram puzzle by using a word or well-known phrase as a base, and giving a friend only the anagram that you created, which should also be a clue to the solution. Here are a few classic examples, drawn from one of the greatest books of word play, Dmitri Borgmann’s Language on Vacation. Each of these has a one-word solution.

• Voices rant on.—–See Answer
  Conversation
• A stew, sir?———-See Answer
  Waitress
• Nine thumps.——-See Answer
  Punishment
• A rope ends it.—–See Answer
  Desperation
• Let’s rush!———–See Answer
  Hustlers

If you create an anagram from a phrase instead of a single word, you can make things a little easier on the solver by including the number of letters in each word of the solution, like so:

• Pittance! (1,4,3)——————–See Answer
  A cent tip
• They gladden so. (3,6,4)——–See Answer
  The golden days
• Art’s models (3,7)—————–See Answer
  Old masters
• A fib. (I got loot.) (3,3,2,4)—-See Answer
  Too big to fail

A Unique Number Anagram

11 + 2 = 12 + 1

Not only is the above equation true, but “eleven plus two” is an anagram of “twelve plus one,” and each phrase has the number of letters that the addition indicates.

Two Equal Texts

Christian Bok and Micah Lexier created this anagrammatical poem, Two Equal Texts: