Guide

Blank tiles and the ? wildcard

Last reviewed 7 October 2026

A blank stands for any letter and scores 0 in English Scrabble and in Words With Friends. On this site a blank is a question mark. Two is the limit. A third would try the alphabet again for every open slot, and the rack would stop feeling instant.

The same mark does two different jobs. Which one you get depends on the mode, not on the character.

In your hand: All words and Anagrams

Here ? is a tile you hold. It can become any letter, in any position. Type A?PLE and switch to Anagrams. That is A, P, L and E plus one blank, and every tile must be used. ENABLE returns 37 five-letter words. Apple and ample are in the list. So are maple, pearl, plate, pedal and panel. Maple is the one people miss when they only picture the fruit.

All words is looser: you do not have to spend every tile. The blank can sit inside a shorter word. That is the right mode when the board has a three-letter gap and a blank still in the rack.

On the grid: Pattern mode

In Pattern mode ? is an empty square that stays put. A?PLE there means five letters, A, then anything, then P, L, E. That is a crossword question, not a rack. The pattern guide uses that form. If you wanted the 37-word rack, you are in the wrong mode.

A short blank that is easy to misread

QI? as an anagram — Q, I and one blank, every letter used — is only QIS in ENABLE. It does not mean “words that start with QI”. For that, leave Letters empty and type QI in Starts with, or open Q without U. QI and ZA are both in ENABLE. With no blank, each is 11 Scrabble points.

What the score ignores

The number next to a word is the face value of the tiles. A blank adds nothing. A real Q still adds 10. Double-word and triple-letter squares are not applied, because this page cannot see the board. Switch Score to WWF only when you are in that app. The letters that moved between the two tables are listed in Scrabble vs Words With Friends.

Try A?PLE · Try LISTEN? · Open the unscrambler

How many blanks you can use

English Scrabble deals two blanks. This solver caps blanks at two as well, so a search stays fast enough to feel like a rack, not a batch job. Type a third ? and the tool will not invent a third wild — keep the search honest to the game you are actually playing.

If you are studying bingo stems rather than playing a live board, you usually want known letters, not blanks. Open bingo stems or type a seven-letter rack without wildcards on the home unscrambler in Anagrams mode.

Worked racks worth trying

?? alone is every two-letter ENABLE word the blanks can become. That is a teaching toy, not a play. Add real tiles.
RE??ING in Anagrams (must use every tile) surfaces words such as reigning and bringing when the blanks fit — useful when you hold R E I N G and two wilds.
Q? as an anagram is the short list of Q-plus-blank twos and threes. Pair it with Q without U when you are hunting QI lines without spending a blank on U.

Scoring blanks without fooling yourself

Face-value scores on this site treat a blank as zero, which matches both Scrabble and Words With Friends tile points. They do not add the premium square the blank covers, and they do not add the bingo bonus. If your blank sits on a triple-letter as a Z, the board score is not the number next to the word here. Rank candidates by tile sum, then check the square with your eyes.

Switch Score to WWF only when you are in that app. The letters that change rank between the two tables are listed in Scrabble vs Words With Friends. A blank stays zero in both.

Common mistakes

Using Pattern mode when you meant a blank in hand — Pattern keeps ? glued to one square.
Leaving Score on Scrabble while you play WWF, then arguing about a two-point swing on L or N.
Assuming every ENABLE word is legal in your club’s TWL or Collins book. Casual play is usually fine; rated play is not.
Forgetting that a blank is still a tile you must place. Anagrams mode that requires every tile will not leave a blank unused.

Privacy and speed

Letters stay in this browser. The dictionary is loaded locally after the first fetch. That is why two blanks are the limit: the search is combinatorial, and the site is built to answer on a phone without shipping your rack to a server. If a search feels slow, remove a blank or shorten the rack before you assume the page is broken.