About Word Soup
Free, fast word game tools — built by a lifelong word puzzle enthusiast who wanted something better.
Hi, I'm Steve
Retired aerospace engineer · Word game enthusiast since age 9
I have been playing Scrabble since I was about nine years old. What started as a family game night staple turned into a lifelong passion — one that eventually expanded to crossword puzzles, Wordle, Words With Friends, and just about any game that involves wrestling meaning out of a jumble of letters.
By profession I spent my career as an aerospace engineer, which means I have always been drawn to systems, patterns, and elegant solutions to tricky problems. Word games scratch that same itch — there is real satisfaction in finding the one word that fits a constrained space, whether that is a Scrabble board or a crossword grid.
Now retired, I keep my mind active with word puzzles every day. I believe staying mentally engaged through games, reading, and learning is good for the mind, and research suggests it's associated with better cognitive health in later life. Word games are my preferred method.
I'll never forget one game where I went first and played WHEELED, using all seven tiles on my very first turn for 78 points. (The tiles were worth 14, doubled by the center star, plus the 50-point bonus for playing all seven.) It set the tone for the whole game, and I finished with over 400 points. It has never happened again.
My best single turn came in my early thirties, in a game against my wife, who was also an engineer and a MUCH better Scrabble player than I. As I remember it, the play scored close to 200 points, though after all these years I can't recall exactly which tiles I used. We checked the numbers over and over to make sure we weren't being fooled by our eyes.
A few memories that shaped this site
The family Scrabble board
My mother kept a Scrabble board set up on the dining room table for most of my childhood. Games would start after dinner and sometimes run until midnight. She was ruthless — she knew every two-letter word in the dictionary long before I understood why that mattered. I spent years trying to beat her. I eventually did, but it took until my late twenties.
Engineering and word patterns
Working in aerospace, I spent decades thinking about systems — how components connect, how small changes propagate through a structure, how constraints shape solutions. When I retired and started playing Scrabble more seriously, I realized the same thinking applied. A Scrabble board is a constraint system. Your rack is your input. The dictionary is your solution space. The engineering mindset turned out to be surprisingly useful.
The frustration that built this site
A few years ago I was deep in a Words With Friends game and needed to check whether ZOEAE was a valid plural. I went to three different word tools. The first was buried under pop-up ads. The second required me to create an account. The third loaded so slowly I gave up. I thought: I can build something better than this. So I did.
Why I built Word Soup
Like anyone who plays a lot of word games, I occasionally hit a wall: a moment of brain fog where a perfectly good rack just will not reveal its words, or a crossword clue that refuses to click. I started reaching for online tools and found most of them frustrating: cluttered with ads, slow to load, or buried under pop-ups before they would show me a single result.
So I built the tool I actually wanted to use. Word Soup is fast, clean, and gets out of the way. No sign-up, no paywalls, no dark patterns, just a straightforward word assistant that respects your time and your intelligence. The ads you see here help cover hosting, and I've tried to keep them out of your way.
I also wanted to build something genuinely useful rather than merely functional. That meant explaining how each tool works, writing strategy guides drawn from how I play, and answering the questions I had when I was learning. If it helps you as much as it helps me, it has done its job.
What I believe about word games
Word games are genuinely good for you
There is solid research showing that mentally stimulating activities — including word games — are associated with better cognitive health as we age. I am not making medical claims, but I do believe that the habit of looking for patterns, holding multiple possibilities in mind, and searching for precise language is a healthy mental exercise. I play every day partly for fun and partly because I want to keep my mind sharp.
Here is some interesting material, if you would like additional information on the cognitive association of word games and crossword puzzles.
- JAMA Network Open (Monash University / ASPREE) — 10,318 older Australians, leisure activities and dementia risk over 10 years, published 2023. Plain language summary from the research team
- Pillai JA, Hall CB, Dickson DW, et al. Association of crossword puzzle participation with memory decline in persons who develop dementia. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society. 2011;17:1006–1013. Read on Cambridge Core
- Devanand DP, Goldberg TE, Qian M, et al. Computerized games versus crosswords training in mild cognitive impairment. NEJM Evidence. Published October 27, 2022. doi:10.1056/EVIDoa2200121 — Columbia University summary
- A Consensus on the Brain Training Industry from the Scientific Community (73 scientists, October 2014). Cornell University discussion — APA Monitor coverage
Vocabulary is a skill, not a gift
People sometimes assume that good Scrabble players just 'know a lot of words' naturally. In my experience, the best players have deliberately studied — they have learned the two-letter words, the Q-without-U words, the common bingo stems. Vocabulary is a skill you can build systematically, and word tools like this one are part of how you build it. Using a word unscrambler to study is not cheating; it is practice.
While researching, to help me build this site, I was amazed to learn that the current North American list (NWL2023, in effect since February 29, 2024) has 107 valid two-letter words, up from 101 in 2006. The international Collins Scrabble Words list has more than 120. I keep discovering fascinating tidbits like this as I tweak the site, and you can find more on the North American Scrabble Players Association's NWL2023 page.
The best word games reward both knowledge and strategy
What I love about Scrabble is that it rewards two different kinds of intelligence: vocabulary (knowing the words) and strategy (knowing where to play them, when to exchange, how to block your opponent). My first-turn bingo with WHEELED needed both. I had to spot the seven-letter word, but it earned 78 points because it covered the center star: the tiles totaled 14, doubled to 28, plus the 50-point bonus for using all seven. A player with a bigger vocabulary can still lose to someone who reads the board better, and that combination of knowledge and tactics is what has kept the game interesting for me after decades of play.
Free tools should actually be free
I have strong feelings about this. A tool that requires you to create an account, watch a video, or click through three pages of ads before showing you a result is not really free — it is extracting payment in a different currency. Word Soup is free in the genuine sense: you arrive, you use the tool, you leave. The ads that run on this site are how I keep the lights on, and I have tried to keep them unobtrusive. If you find the site useful, leaving ads enabled is the best way to support it.
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Strategy guides, word game history, vocabulary tips, and more, written from my own experience with AI assistance for drafting and editing.
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