How to Play Daily Jumble

Four scrambled words, one cartoon, one punchline. Here is exactly how the puzzle works and how to get faster at it.

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The four steps

1
Unscramble
Rearrange each of the four jumbled words into a common English word.
2
Collect circles
Note the letters that land in the circled positions.
3
Read the cartoon
The caption and the drawing hint at the final punchline.
4
Solve the punchline
Rearrange the circled letters into the pun that completes the caption.
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What the Daily Jumble is

The Jumble is a word scramble that has run in newspapers since 1954. Every puzzle gives you four scrambled words and a cartoon with a caption that trails off mid-sentence. Solve the four words, pull out the letters sitting in the circled squares, and rearrange those into the pun that finishes the caption. The joke is the point — the four words are just the route to it.

Why the cartoon matters

The circled letters almost never rearrange into only one sensible phrase, so the cartoon is doing real work. The drawing tells you the setting, and the caption tells you the grammatical shape of the answer — how many words, and whether it ends in a noun, an adjective or a verb. Read the caption before you start shuffling letters and you will cut your solving time roughly in half.

Strategy that actually helps

  • Split vowels from consonants. Writing them in two groups breaks the visual grip of the scrambled order.
  • Hunt for endings. -ING, -ED, -LY, -ER and -TION account for a large share of Jumble answers.
  • Test common pairs. TH, CH, SH, ST, TR and QU stick together far more often than chance.
  • Write the letters in a circle. With no left-to-right order, your brain stops re-reading the same wrong word.
  • Do the short words first. Five-letter answers usually fall fastest, and their circled letters narrow the punchline early.

Difficulty through the week

Like most syndicated puzzles, the Jumble ramps up as the week goes on. Monday and Tuesday lean on short, everyday words. By the weekend you will see six- and seven-letter answers and punchlines that run to three or four words. If you are building the habit, start mid-week and work outwards.

When you are stuck

There is no shame in a hint. Our Jumble Solver unscrambles any set of letters against a full English dictionary, and every day's answers page reveals the words one at a time so you can take a single nudge without spoiling the rest. Every past puzzle is in the archive.

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