Blanagram


A blanagram is a word which is an anagram of another but for the substitution of a single letter. The term has its origin in competitive Scrabble, where a blank tile on a player's rack may be used to form any of several possible words in conjunction with the player's other tiles.

Examples of blanagrams

  • On the list of currently acceptable words for club and tournament Scrabble in North America, the anagram pair EPICOTYL/LIPOCYTE has 18 blanagrams:
  • *Replacing C with L or N yields POLITELY or LINOTYPE;
  • *Replacing I with A or F yields CALOTYPE or COPYLEFT;
  • *Replacing L with C or D yields ECOTYPIC or COPYEDIT;
  • *Replacing O with H or I yields PHYLETIC or PYELITIC;
  • *Replacing P with R or V yields CRYOLITE or VELOCITY;
  • *Replacing T with N yields POLYENIC;
  • *Replacing Y with A, H, N, R, or U yields POETICAL, CHIPOTLE/HELICOPT, LEPTONIC, LEPROTIC/PETROLIC, or POULTICE.
  • The eight-letter word ANGRIEST has over 100 blanagrams that are common words, and many more that are more obscure.
  • The word FILMCARD has only one acceptable blanagram: FLUIDRAM..
  • Turkish is a blanagram of Kurdish.
  • Pangram, Tangram and Managua are blanagrams of the word anagram.
Many seven- and eight-letter words, such as KILOVOLT and QUIXOTIC, have no acceptable blanagrams; such words typically contain a subset of the letters JKQVWXZ.