Word finder for missing letters

How to use the word finder

The tool above works entirely in your browser, with nothing sent to a server, nothing to install, and no account or sign-up step in the way. It works in two modes, and you can switch between them at any point without losing what you've already typed.

Type letters is the default mode, and it matches the classic missing-letters problem directly. Pick a word length with the plus and minus buttons (anything from 3 to 15 letters), then click into each box and type the letters you already know. Leave a box empty for any letter you don't know yet. As soon as you type a letter, the matching word list below updates on its own, no button to press.

Colour tiles mode adds two extra clues per letter. After typing a letter into a box, click the tile itself to cycle its colour: gray means that letter isn't in the word anywhere, yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word but not in that exact spot, and green means the letter is confirmed in that exact position. This is the same interaction a lot of word-guessing games already use, so if you've played one before it will feel familiar straight away.

Results are sorted by Scrabble letter score, highest first, so the words worth the most points in a tile-based game surface at the top. That ordering only matters for a scored game, though; for a plain crossword or a general "what word is this" question, the score is just a consistent way to order an otherwise long list, not a signal about which word is more likely to be correct. Click any result to drop its letters straight into the grid, which is a fast way to double-check a candidate or try a small variation.

Worked examples

A few real scenarios show how the two modes handle different starting points.

A crossword clue. Say a crossword grid gives you a 6-letter answer where you've already pencilled in the 2nd letter as R and the 5th letter as N. Set the length to 6, type R into box 2 and N into box 5, and leave the other four boxes blank. The list narrows from thousands of six-letter words down to the small set that actually fits that pattern, something no plain dictionary search can do.

A Scrabble or Words with Friends rack. You're holding letters that could form a word on the board, and you already know two tiles are locked in place by the existing board layout: say a 5-letter word with S in position 1 and E in position 4. Type S and E into those two boxes, leave the rest blank, and scan the results sorted by score, since a higher-scoring option is worth more on the board even when a lower-scoring word would also fit.

A Wordle-style puzzle. You've made a guess and the game told you the letter A is correct in position 3, the letter T is in the word but not in position 1 where you tried it, and the letter S isn't in the word at all. Switch to Colour tiles mode, type A into position 3 and click it to green, type T into position 1 and click it twice to yellow, then type S anywhere and click it once to gray. The remaining word list respects all three clues at once.

Great for crosswords, Scrabble, Words with Friends, and Wordle-style games

Different word games hand you missing-letter information in different shapes, and this tool is built to take any of them.

Crossword puzzles usually give you a handful of confirmed letters from the crossing words, with everything else unknown. That maps directly onto Type letters mode: known letters go in, unknowns stay blank, and the result list is the set of legal fills for that slot. It works the same whether the source is a newspaper cryptic, a quick crossword, or a themed puzzle from a puzzle app.

Scrabble and Words with Friends work a little differently, since the board itself constrains where a word can go. If part of a word is already fixed by tiles already on the board, Type letters mode handles that the same way as a crossword: fixed positions filled in, open positions blank. Because results are sorted by Scrabble score by default, it's easy to scan for the highest-value option among the words that actually fit the space, rather than settling for the first legal word that comes to mind.

Wordle and the many word games that copied its colour-coded feedback are the one case that needs more than a length and a few known letters, since a gray or yellow result rules things out without confirming a position. Colour tiles mode was built specifically for that: it captures all three states (confirmed position, present but misplaced, and ruled out entirely) in the same grid, so a full guess history can be turned into an accurate candidate list guess after guess.

Reading a pattern like _A_E_N or R??N

A lot of crossword and puzzle sites write partial words with underscores or question marks standing in for the letters you don't know yet, something like _A_E_N or R??N. That's exactly what the blank boxes in Type letters mode represent: each blank is one unknown letter in that exact position, and each filled box is a letter you're certain about.

To use a pattern like that here, count the total number of characters (underscores and letters together) and set the word length to match, then type the known letters into their matching positions and leave the rest blank. _A_E_N is 6 characters long, so you'd set the length to 6, then type A into position 2, E into position 4, and N into position 6. The tool doesn't need the underscore or question mark characters themselves, just the length and the known letters in the right spots.

Built with New Zealand and British spelling in mind

The dictionary behind this tool includes both the spelling-neutral core of English and the words that are specifically British or Commonwealth in form, words like colour, favourite, centre, organise, and neighbour, alongside their American counterparts where both exist. That matters for a missing-letters tool in a way it might not for ordinary spell-check: if you're solving a New Zealand newspaper crossword and the answer is meant to be centre rather than center, a dictionary that only knows the American spelling will quietly leave the right answer out of the results.

This isn't a small edge case either. Plenty of everyday 6 and 7-letter words shift a vowel or swap an -ise for an -ize between the two conventions, and a puzzle that expects the British spelling will simply have no correct answer in an American-only word list. Building the dictionary from both sets from the start means a New Zealand solver doesn't have to second-guess which spelling convention a particular puzzle was written for.

See the word list page for exactly where this dictionary comes from, how large it is, and how the British and spelling-neutral word sets were combined.

Keyboard shortcuts and getting around quickly

The letter grid is built to be used entirely from the keyboard once you've clicked into the first box. Typing a letter automatically moves focus to the next empty box, so you can type an entire pattern without reaching for the mouse. The left and right arrow keys move between boxes without changing anything, which is useful for double-checking a pattern before you commit to it. Backspace on an empty box clears the previous box and moves focus back to it, matching the way most text fields already behave.

In Colour tiles mode, pressing Enter or the space bar on a filled box cycles its colour the same way a click does, which means the whole tool, typing letters, cycling colours, and moving between boxes, works without a mouse or touchscreen at all. Every box also carries a screen-reader label describing its letter and current state, updated live as you type or click, so the tool stays usable with assistive technology rather than only working visually.

Common mistakes when filling in missing letters

A few small habits account for most of the "why isn't this working" moments, and all of them are quick to check before assuming the tool or the dictionary is at fault.

The most common one is an off-by-one word length. If a crossword grid actually has seven boxes and the length here is set to six, every letter lands one position early, and the result list either comes back empty or full of near-misses that don't quite fit. Count the boxes again before typing anything, especially on a clue where the grid itself is hard to read at a glance.

The second is mixing spelling conventions inside the same attempt: typing an American letter pattern (center, color) into a puzzle that expects the British or New Zealand form (centre, colour), or the other way around. Since the dictionary includes both, the fix is usually just trying the other spelling in the same positions rather than assuming the word isn't in the list at all.

In Colour tiles mode specifically, a stale tile is an easy trap: clicking a tile cycles gray, then yellow, then green, and it's simple to click one time too many or too few while working through several letters in a row. If a result list looks wrong for no obvious reason, checking each tile's colour against the actual clue is usually faster than starting over from scratch.

Finally, it helps to remember what kind of tool this actually is. It's a word completer, not a definitions lookup: given a partial pattern, it will finish the word from its 76,266-word dictionary, but it has no way to know which of several valid completions matches the specific clue, theme, or board you're solving for. Use the result list to narrow the field down to a short set of real candidates, then check that shortlist against the actual crossword clue, Scrabble board, or puzzle theme to pick the one that actually belongs.