{{Short description|Form of anagram}} {{refimprove|date=October 2009}} A '''blanagram''' (portmanteau of blank and anagram) 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 (OWL2), 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. :Note that in this case no blanagram is available by replacing the E, so EPICOTYL and LIPOCYTE are the only eight-letter words that can be formed from the Scrabble tiles CILOPTY plus a blank.

*The eight-letter word ANGRIEST (and anagrams such as GANTRIES and INGRATES) has over 100 blanagrams that are common words, and many more that are more obscure.<!-- See talk page for some of them; seems overkill to swamp the article --> *The word FILMCARD has only one acceptable blanagram: FLUIDRAM. (However, some other dictionaries list other possibilities, such as FRICADEL<ref>{{cite web|url=http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype%3D3%26search%3Dfricadel |title=Fricadel definition - Dictionary - MSN Encarta |accessdate=2010-02-08 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604055500/http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/dictionary/DictionaryResults.aspx?lextype=3&search=fricadel |archivedate=2011-06-04 }}</ref> and FILECARD<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thefreedictionary.com/filecard|title=filecard|publisher=|via=The Free Dictionary}}</ref>). *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.

==References== {{reflist}}

{{Scrabble}}

Category:Scrabble Category:Wordplay