Tips for finding better anagrams

Although Anagram Genius does most of the work in finding good anagrams, a skilled user can improve its chances. Here are a few tips for getting the most out of the program.

• The scope for good anagrams is very dependent on the balance of letters in the anagram text. Texts containing 'J's, 'Z's and 'Q's will generate anagrams of lower scores and the subwords containing those rare letters will become disproportionately more important than those that do not. Try to avoid texts with a strange balance of letters and if you do hand score the subwords that contain the rare letters to make sure that they are given the correct category as these words will be disproportionately important during the anagram search. Strange letter balances can often be avoided when you have a choice of what the text can be. For example, if your name is Michael John Ryan you should do much better anagramming "Michael Ryan" than "Michael J. Ryan" or "Michael John Ryan" - try it and see! Similarly if your name is John, longer variants of your name including middle names may dilute the effect of the "J".
• Hand editing of subwords at the Word Stage is time-consuming but worthwhile. It is surprising how often a careful check of the scan will reveal an amazingly relevant word which through the ignorance of the program about the text is not scored highly enough. Generally speaking it is more important to find good words which have not been scored highly enough than to spend time reducing the value of irrelevant words that have been scored too well (though both methods will have some benefit). One case where reducing the value of an irrelevant word will have significant benefit is when you find that it is dominating the anagrams, perhaps because it mops up all the rare letters and has a good score. If you see this happening, flick back to the Word Stage, change its score and start the search again by clicking on the search or weed buttons.
• Similarly, use of compulsory words is a valuable technique if you find an extremely relevant word or are anagramming a particularly long subject. Once you have generated the anagrams containing these compulsory words, weed the best ones and then return to the word stage to try some alternative combinations. The weeded list will remain and you can add to it.
• If you are anagramming a large group of people who all come from the same company, university or town etc., consider creating a custom dictionary that is relevant to this thing that they have in common. For a company, this could include the names of its products, the names of key employees, company jargon etc. You will be amazed how often these highly relevant words can come out of the letters of a name and result in remarkably relevant anagrams.
• Try and choose subjects that you know lots about. If you choose such a subject the chances of finding relevant anagrams are greatly increased. If you only know one thing about the text you are unlikely to be able to say that in an anagram.
• If you do not succeed the first time, try again! For most anagram texts there are variants that you can try. For most people there are first name variants (Robert, Bob, Rob etc.), middle names and initials that can be inserted or left out and/or titles/qualifications ("Mister", "MA", "Doctor" etc.) that can be added on or left off. For businesses there are appendages such as "Inc.", "Ltd" and "Corp". The Apply... button at the Word Stage is extremely useful in such situations. Try with the longer variants first, carefully go through the subwords and then use your work on the other variations saving you from having to repeat this process with the other texts!

If you find any truly excellent anagrams of famous subjects, this is your chance to go down in anagramming history as the discoverer by submitting them to the Anagram Genius Archive!