Cool Anagram generates anagrams from a user supplied set of words in an extremely fast manner.

Anagrams are formed when the letters of a word or set of words are rearranged to make other words. These newly formed words cannot just be any random arrangement of letters, but they have to be words contained in an English dictionary. The software is supplied with two lists of dictionary words. The smaller list contains over 20, 000 words and the larger one contains over 111, 000.

Both word lists contain short abbreviations and acronyms, which can reduce the quality of the generated anagrams when they are used by the software.

One point of anagramming is to rearrange the letters of a person’s name to generate something amusing. Perhaps you will find some hidden truth!

Some experimentation is required in order to find good anagrams. Swap between using the small and large word lists. Vary the minimum and maximum number of words used for the generated anagrams.

When you want to enter a new set of words to be anagrammed, press the Stop button to re-enable the text entry field.

Sometimes you have to help the software to obtain good anagrams! The more letters and words you enter the more junk anagrams you will have to sift through. For example, if your phrase contains the letters I, M and A remove them before entering the letters in. Afterwards you can add I’M A to every anagram that gets produced. If you remove the letters I, M and A from my name and enter in MRTN STUART AMO instead of MARTIN STUART MAMO then one of the the anagrams produced will be SMART TROUT MAN and you can add the I’M A to produce Man, I’m a smart trout!

This software was originally written as a Java web-page applet in the year 1997. In 2003, it was converted into a web-page ActiveX control. When ActiveX web controls were discontinued, it was changed into a Windows application.