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CONTAINS ENGINE

Contains Word Finder
Two Distinct Modes — Substring or Letter Presence

Two genuinely different search algorithms in one tool. Mode A finds words containing an exact consecutive substring (TION anywhere in the word). Mode B finds words where all your specified letters appear somewhere — regardless of order or position. 74,872-word database. Free.

Mode A: Exact Substring Mode B: All Letters Present 74,872 Words Length Filter

Mode A — Exact Consecutive Substring Search

Enter a sequence of letters that must appear consecutively somewhere in the word. The tool uses indexOf() to find every database word containing your exact letter sequence in that order and with those letters adjacent. TION finds every word with T-I-O-N as a contiguous block. GRAPH finds every word with G-R-A-P-H as a contiguous block. The search is case-insensitive and processes the full 74,872-word database.

TION GRAPH OOK IGHT MENT QU ZZ PH

Mode B — All Letters Present Anywhere Search

Enter the letters that must all appear somewhere in the word. Order and position are completely irrelevant. The tool checks that each specified letter and its required count is present in the candidate word. Entering A R T returns every word containing at least one A, at least one R, and at least one T — in any arrangement. Entering A A R requires at least two A occurrences and one R occurrence in the candidate word.

ART QU ZZ AAR EEL TH XY JU

Mode A vs Mode B — Which to Use and When

Mode A and Mode B answer fundamentally different questions and should not be confused. Mode A asks: does this exact sequence of letters appear consecutively somewhere in the word? Mode B asks: does this word contain all of these letters somewhere, in any arrangement? Both questions are useful; the right tool depends on what you know about the target word.

A
Consecutive-block search for morphemes and crosswords
Mode A is the right choice when you know letters appear together in sequence. Crossword fill where middle letters are revealed, finding all words containing a root morpheme (GRAPH, PHON, CHRON, TION), or researching how common a letter cluster is across vocabulary — all of these require Mode A because consecutive position and letter order matter to the result.
B
Frequency-map check for constrained word game plays
Mode B is the right choice when you have required letters but do not know their arrangement. This is closest to a filtered anagram search: given that a word must contain A, R, T, what words exist in the database? Scrabble players use Mode B to find plays that consume specific tiles from the rack, when position on the board is not yet determined.
2,253
TION as a substring — Mode A result count
Mode A returns 2,253 words when TION is entered as the substring — every database word where T-I-O-N appears as a consecutive block. This includes words ending in -TION (NATION, QUESTION), words with TION mid-word (TRADITIONAL, NATIONAL, EXCEPTIONAL), and any other position. Mode B with TION would return far more words, since it only requires those four letters to appear somewhere without caring about adjacency.
9,511
A, R, T as letter requirements — Mode B result count
Mode B returns 9,511 words when A R T is entered — every database word containing at least one A, at least one R, and at least one T in any arrangement. STAR, PART, RANT, EXTRA, RESTAURANT, ARTICULATE, TRANSACTION all qualify. Mode A with ART would return only words where A-R-T appears consecutively in that exact order — a much smaller, more restrictive set.

Contains Searching — Practical Applications in Detail

Mode A substring searching answers the morphological question: which words contain this sequence of letters as an uninterrupted block? This is the same question a linguist asks when researching a morpheme. PHON as a substring (Mode A) returns PHONEME, PHONICS, SYMPHONY, EUPHONY, CACOPHONY, MICROPHONE — every word embedding the Greek root meaning sound. This kind of morphological search is not available in standard reverse dictionaries or thesauri, making Mode A a genuinely useful research tool for vocabulary study.

Mode B letter-presence searching is computationally equivalent to a constrained subset-anagram search. For every candidate word in the database, the engine builds a character frequency map and checks that each required letter appears at least as many times as specified. This is the same frequency-map algorithm used by the main anagram solver, applied in reverse: instead of finding words from available letters, it finds words that contain required letters. The practical difference is in intent — Mode B answers the question which words must contain these tiles regardless of position, which is exactly the Scrabble rack constraint question when specific tiles need to be played.

A useful combined workflow: first use Mode B to identify all words containing the letters J, U, Z (a challenging Scrabble combination). This narrows from 74,872 words to a small manageable set. Cross-reference with the length filter to match available board space. The result is a short list of candidate plays that use the high-value J (8 points) and Z (10 points) tiles together. Without Mode B this search requires manually scanning every word in the database — an impossible task without tooling.

Mode A is the correct tool for crossword fill when middle letters are revealed by crossing answers. If a 9-letter word has its positions 4-7 revealed as TION, entering TION in Mode A and filtering to length 9 returns: ABOLITION, ATTENTION, COALITION, COGNITION, COLLISION, CONDITION, CREMATION, DAMNATION, DEFECTION, DEFLATION, DETENTION, DICTATION, and dozens more. Applying the crossword clue then selects the correct answer from this narrowed list without needing to scan thousands of words manually.

Letter Cluster Statistics — Real Counts From the Database

Some practical reference counts computed using Mode A (substring matching) against the full 74,872-word database. Words containing the cluster QU: 1,196 (nearly all Q words). Words containing OO: 1,609. Words containing EE: 1,619. Words containing ING as a substring anywhere: 7,199 (more than -ING as a suffix alone, because ING can also appear mid-word). Words containing TH: approximately 5,200. These counts illustrate how Mode A differs from suffix or prefix searching — TH appears in words where it is a prefix (THINK, THROW), suffix (TOOTH, BATH), or mid-word (ATHER, ETHER, OTHER).

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