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Word Pattern Search
Tool to find a word by patterns, word search either to solve a substitution, or to solve a crossword-like game.
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Word Pattern Search —
Tag(s) : Word Search
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Word Search with Pattern
Answers to Questions (FAQ)
What is a word pattern search? (Definition)
Searching by word pattern is an ambiguous notion, dCode offers 2 modes:
— (1) Desubstitution: the pattern of letters describes a mono-alphabetic substitution.
Example: The ABBA pattern allows you to find all the 4-letter words having the first letter identical to the last letter and a pair of 2 identical letters in the middle (but different from the first and last letter and not necessarily an A or a B’), like the word NOON.
Example: The pattern -A-A- indicates a word of 5 letters with the 2nd and the 4th identical letter (not necessarily an A) the other letters (— = joker) can be any letter. Words like COCOA or SEVEN match the pattern.
— (2) Crosswords: the letter pattern describes the state of a Crossword
Example: The pattern -E-E-E indicates a 6 letter word with an E in 2nd, 4th and 6th position (such as DELETE, SEVERE, etc.)
How to search for a word ciphered using mono-alphabetical substitution?
From a cipher word (idiomorph), the unsubstitution consists in analyzing the distribution of the letters and especially the position of the repeated letters. Long words (from 9-10 letters) have a rather unique fingerprint.
Example: The pattern LWZLMOMWMOGF can correspond to the word SUBSTITUTION
This approach only works for monoalphabetic substitutions and for an existing word in the dictionary.
How to search for a word using known letters positions?
From the position of certain letters in a word, a dictionary search is possible. This is typically intended for lovers of crosswords (players or makers) and similar word games.
Example: The pattern -N-G-A- may lead to the word ‘ANAGRAM’
Source code
dCode retains ownership of the «Word Pattern Search» source code. Except explicit open source licence (indicated Creative Commons / free), the «Word Pattern Search» algorithm, the applet or snippet (converter, solver, encryption / decryption, encoding / decoding, ciphering / deciphering, translator), or the «Word Pattern Search» functions (calculate, convert, solve, decrypt / encrypt, decipher / cipher, decode / encode, translate) written in any informatic language (Python, Java, PHP, C#, Javascript, Matlab, etc.) and all data download, script, or API access for «Word Pattern Search» are not public, same for offline use on PC, mobile, tablet, iPhone or Android app!
Reminder : dCode is free to use.
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Exporting results as a .csv or .txt file is free by clicking on the export icon
Cite as source (bibliography):
Word Pattern Search on dCode.fr [online website], retrieved on 2023-04-14, https://www.dcode.fr/word-pattern-search
Summary
https://www.dcode.fr/word-pattern-search
© 2023 dCode — The ultimate ‘toolkit’ to solve every games / riddles / geocaching / CTF.
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v1.4.2, 03 Mar 2022 by Robert Giordano
The Design215 Word Pattern Finder is our second word finder utility. It uses wildcards,
include, exclude, and patterns to find similar words. This utility can help with wordle, crossword puzzles,
hangman, substitution ciphers, and other word games. To unscramble words or find anagrams,
try our original word finder.
Directions and Tips
- Enter patterns like: ;46(;88*
This will find words like «BLUEBOOK», «RESTROOM», and «THIRTEEN». This is useful for solving simple
substitution ciphers and cryptograms. Use this in combination with the KNOWN LETTERS field to narrow down the words. For example,
enter ;46(;88* in PATTERN and t—t— in KNOWN LETTERS. - Enter partial patterns with placeholders like —aabb—
This will find words like «BALLOONED», «COFFEEPOT», and «SUCCEEDED». You can also use this with KNOWN LETTERS. For example,
—aabb— in PATTERN and b——— in KNOWN LETTERS, will only find «BALLOONED». - Enter Known Letters like: f—k
You can use the KNOWN LETTERS field by itself to help with crosswords and similar puzzles. Enter f—k to
find four letter words that start with «f» and end with «k», like «fork» and «funk». - The CONTAINS field works two ways. Enter «cat» with the checkbox unchecked, and you’ll find words
like «catch», «locate», and «tomcat». If «any order» is checked, you’ll find words containing the letters
«c», «a», and «t», in any order, like «cadet», «exact», and «teach». - Use DOES NOT CONTAIN to exclude any letters that you do not want shown in the results,
letters that have already been used (like in Hangman), or letters that are not available.
We Want Your Suggestions!
If you find a bug, or have any suggestions to make our utility better, please leave a comment below or contact us directly. We want to constantly improve our site by listening to your
feedback! =)
- Version 1.4.2, 2022-03-03
Added some code to disable auto-correct on iPhones. When typing — for placeholders, it was turning into
a long dash. Thanks to a user for the suggestion! - Version 1.4.1, 2019-08-25
Enabled placeholders in the PATTERN field. Thanks to a user for the suggestion! - Version 1.4.0, 2019-08-22
Fixed a compatibility issue with UTF-8 characters used in the PATTERN field - Version 1.3, 2012-12-31
PATTERN searches and KNOWN LETTERS now work together. Optimized code finds words 20-30% faster.
Page description updated.
SCRABBLE is a trademark of Hasbro in the United States and Canada.
Scrabble rights elsewhere in the world are held by J.W. Spear and Sons, PLC.
[28 Comments]
Useful tool!!
03 May 2021 9:12am
«Thanks for this, my friend made a cipher and I had been trying to solve it for days before I found this. I found most of it within a couple hours of finding this website!!«
Word patterns
14 May 2019 4:28pm
«I tried the pattern —aabb— and got nothing. I can think of one common word that fits, BALLOONED, plus less common HALLOOING and SWEETTALK used as a verb. Is there a restriction that you cannot use the «-» placeholder in a pattern?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
I recently edited the instructions and hopefully they are better now. I JUST fixed placeholders in the PATTERN field. I tested it with your pattern and got:
BALLOONED
COFFEEPOT
GALLOONED
GREENNESS
HALLOOING
HULLOOING
RATTOONED
SUCCEEDED
SUCCEEDER
WHEELLESS
Apparently «SWEETTALK» is not a valid Scrabble word«
Placeholder
28 May 2018 6:42am
«On my tablet, dash asplaceholder means I have to switch virtual keyboard.could you allow ? Say or . As placeholder?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
That’s definitely a possibility. We are in the process of the upgrading the entire site for mobile so I’ll keep that in mind. I might even make it so there are multiple placeholder characters.«
Steve Mitchell Sr.
23 Jan 2018 4:47pm
«Robert, many thanks for your amazing creation of Toolbox Utilities, which I relied on, for six years of word games and puzzle creations for Korean university English classes, until retirement recently. Your work has been a significant contribution to Education world-wide, and will also assist in tutoring homeschoolers, and helping TIMAGA [ Trump In Making America Great Again ]. Thanx Sorry that I don’t use or trust social media, since a colleague had great difficulty in opting out way back.«
Casey need help
21 Sep 2017 8:43am
«Ok I have a puzzle that my 87 year granny is working on in the local paper. We are stumped!!! The scrambled words are as followed : Singaebitrrt it has to be in two 6 letter words, the hint is, The Alaskan fishing boat captain was disoriented and needed to get his ____? Would you please help I seem to not be doing something right!! Thanks
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
The answer is «Bering Strait» but since this is a name of a location, «Bering» is not in the current word list.
In the future, I may add options where you can select additional word lists for slang, names, places, etc.«
Jennifer
05 Oct 2016 3:01pm
«I love this! It would be perfect if you had the definition of the word or a link to the definition…that’s probably too hard to do but it would be so nice if that’s possible!«
missing letters
14 Feb 2015 8:33am
«_ _ u p _ u _ _ o _ t a _. ans me this missing letters plzz
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
The current word list does not have names of people or places.
Here are the only 13-letter words in the list where «UP» are the 3rd and 4th letters:
acupuncturist
fluphenazines
reupholstered
stupefactions
I got these by searching for —up———«
Puzzler
20 Dec 2014 9:58am
«Thanks for this great puzzle help! I would like to search for two words at once with similar or overlapping patterns, like «abcde fcdeg» is this somehow possible with this great tool?
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
I might be able to add that feature in the future.«
Matt
23 Nov 2013 8:55am
«Hello, great ressource. I find it very useful. However, when using patterns, a regexp option would be helpful. Say I have a pattern and suspect some letters to be within a small range. This can be done with KNOWN LETTERS, but every combo must be tested separately. Say I have pattern abccde and suspect the 1st letter to be among T, O and S and the last among E, N, R. This means 9 runs when a regexp option would require only one !«
question
02 Feb 2013 1:07pm
«Great site and very helpful for cryptograms. What language did use to program it? Is it perl?«
Jackie
01 Nov 2012 6:19am
«Great site — use it nearly every day — seasonal word missing — HALLOWEEN — was not listed when provided the pattern RQFFBEOOM. Thought you would want to know…
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Thanks for your comment. This is one of the Scrabble word list’s caveats. «Halloween», for whatever reason, is not listed as an official Scrabble Tournament word. «Halloween» IS LISTED in the «Standard» word list. I’m working on an unabridged word list that will combine the two. Some people want to know if a word is a «legal» word under Scrabble rules. Others don’t care, hence the two word lists.«
Known Letters ??
26 Sep 2012 8:01am
«I am SOOOOO Glad you are back — love your site. Since you have returned I am unable to get the «KNOWN LETTERS» field to work. I usually fill in the PATTERN first and run that and then see the narrowed field after entering the «KNOWN LETTERS» — doing this, the result is not changed — the KNOWN LETTERS are cleared and typing them in again and trying gives the same result. Hope this helps you find the bug — or maybe it just me — I am using Googles Chrome browser, but have seen it on IE also.
[UPDATED 31 DEC 2012]
PATTERN searches and KNOWN LETTERS now work together!! Thanks for your feedback! It helps us constantly improve our utilities.
[Original Reply from Robert Giordano, Edited]
Thanks for the compliments and we are glad to be back as well!! The Word Pattern Finder was rebuilt from scratch and it might work a bit differently.
In most cases, people use KNOWN LETTERS with Include and/or Exclude to find the words they want. I designed PATTERN searches for special cases, like solving cryptograms, finding words that start and end with the same letters, and so on. That being said, please let me know if you have any more trouble. Suggestions for improvements are always welcome. =)«
love site but missing word
23 Sep 2012 7:46am
«I’m so glad one of my favorite sites is back! But it failed to help me find the word «buttoning» when given B—O-I-G
[Reply from Robert Giordano]
Thanks for pointing this out. It was definitely a bug and we just fixed it. We had to rebuild many of our utilities because of a data center issue where we lost our main web server and our backup server. I just tried your known letters B—O-I-G and got:
balloting
beaconing
beckoning
befooling
behooving
bellowing
besmoking
besnowing
bestowing
billowing
bishoping
blazoning
bolloxing
boohooing
borrowing
bottoming
bowwowing
burrowing
buttoning <— including this one!
Thanks again for pointing out the problem! If you see any more bugs please tell us.
cheers,
Robert«
Rocker
07 Aug 2012 1:04pm
«superb site..«
Word Patterns
09 Apr 2012 3:16am
«Many thanks for this excellent tool; fast to use and full of useful word suggestions. I particularly appreciate your Directions and Tips for entering known letters.«
mrhollywood
20 Feb 2012 10:56am
«This is the best Website on the Internet!«
MamaPurl
01 Dec 2011 2:25am
«I love your program! I’m using it to generate word lists for my students.«
Cool
23 Jun 2011 11:32am
«Only thing to make this perfect. If you do a search, but then add a letter to exclude, you can’t search again until you delete a known letter, search, then put the known letter back.«
shiv
11 Jun 2011 8:38pm
«SUPER DUPER tool, very useful, ill help you by clicking ads.«
somebody
12 Sep 2010 12:02pm
«love it. just what i was looking for«
Really useful for word games
07 Sep 2010 11:48pm
«if you are playing a word game then nothing in this world can help much more than this tool, thanks coder.«
i lik3 diz
13 Dec 2009 10:02am
«daum diz crap helpz me find my wordz faster«
Thanks for the great tool
26 Jun 2009 1:27pm
«This is a great tool for word games. My favorite resource!«
gregg gusta
12 Apr 2009 4:18pm
«lovin’ it«
pie
22 Jan 2009 1:13pm
«awesome — really helpful«
dontknow
11 Dec 2008 9:47am
«man this thang is whack«
tim
22 Sep 2008 8:05pm
«great tool, used often!!! thank you«
ShoKill
10 Jul 2008 5:04am
«This is pretty awesome. Thank you! 
«
Leave a Comment
Enter any word or pattern of word to search. Also set any word length constraint if you want. Use wildcards * and ? as required.
Quick Help
1. In the word search field enter any word or letter in any pattern
Rule for using wildcards to make patters are as follows. (see wildcard help for more info)
a) use * to match any number of unknown letters
b) use ? to match a single letter, multiple use of ? means that number of unknown letters in consecutive positions. Alteratively user may user ? or — or _ , all these three characters have same usage, i.e. single missing letter.
Examples:
i> f?x would return
fax
fix
fox
ii> f*x would return
fabliaux
faix
falx
farebox
faux
fax
fedex
feedbox
and more….
These wildcards can be used in any further complex form like:
g?m?s
inter???
*gram???
This wildcards patterns are similar to wildcard patterns of Windows and Linux terminals.
2. Enter the length of word to find (this is optional)
3. Enter the word length matching style, may be equal or minimum or maximum or not equal to the specified number of word length.
This has no effect if the word length is set to any.
4. Set the sorting order of result, Alphabetically or by word length.
Fast and sharp word finder for fun and education
Crossword ModeFinds words containing given letters («w??d» — «word», «wood»). Enter a pattern. Use a question mark (?) or a dot (.) for unknown letters. |
Tap here for Xworder Mobile. xworder.com/m
Xworder provides word search tools designed to help you solve and compose crosswords Xworder features: Find words if you know some of the letters that it contains («w??d» — «word», «wood»).
Find words that can be built from the given set of letters («scrabble» — «laser»,
Find words and word combinations by rearranging all letters from the given set («anagram»
A fun game of building word chains by changing one letter at a time («break — bread
Switching between the Full and Limited word lists makes it easier to find what you
|
© 2009 — 2011 Xworder.
How to use Xworder
Scrabble® is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the USA and Canada.
Outside of the USA and Canada, the Scrabble® trademark is owned by Mattel, Inc.
Search words by mask
On this page you search by cryptography. This means that unknown letter or letters are replaced with promptness cryptography. The search algorithm understands this and takes the necessary result.
All the known letters in the word indicated by the corresponding letters.
If any of the words you do not know what to write the letter, put it in place of the word ? (the question mark).
If any of the words you do not know a few letters, replace this part of the word in the * (asterisk).
If you specify in the form, imp???an?, the service displays the words containing the letters, and instead of the question mark each one will try to substitute any letter. For example:
- important
- impeccant and others.
If you are in the form of record, ca*t*, then the service will look for these letters and instead sign * will substitute any combination of letters. For example:
- cabalistic
- cabotagem
- cart and others.
If you enter the letters in the form of h*n?, the service displays the words containing the entered letters, and instead vzvezdochki try to substitute any combination of letters. Instead, a question mark — one substitute any letter. For example:
- haapana
- hacksawing
- hailing
- half-bound and others.
Now, just enter the letters and words of the mask. Then click on the search button or «Enter» on the keyboard.