ana-grabr

This is the official support page for the iPhone app ana-grabr. The current release version is 1.2. The app works well (and renders sharply) in the 2x mode on iPad.

(There is also a Web-app version of this iPhone app. It runs well on a laptop or desktop computer; but less well on a mobile device. Hence the iPhone app!)

For online help and advice, send e-mail to xxx at andrewduncan.ws, where you have to replace xxx with “support”. (Describing it this way helps thwart automated tools that look for e-mails and spam them.)

Brief Explanation

(To get quick help in the app, tap the i icon at the bottom right.)

This mobile app helps you to find anagrams: rearrangements of the letters in a word or words. For example, an anagram for “stop” is “pots”. Others are “tops” and “opts” and “spot” and “post”. Of course, another anagram for it is “sotp”, but that is not a word, and we are mostly interested in anagrams that are real words.

When you first start the app, you see this screen. To the right is a very brief description of what to do.

screen shot

More Explanation

The words you start with, the given words, are referred to as the source. Here is the way you use this app.

  1. Tap the top entry field. A typewriter slides up at the bottom of the screen. Type any word or words, and tap “Done”. For example, let us suppose you entered “anagrams”.

  2. The computer calculates words that fit into the source text. These are put into the list wheel. In our example, some words that fit into “anagrams” include “a”, “agar”, “anagram” (of course), ... and all the way to “snag”. These words might be part of a full anagram.



  3. Scroll the list wheel so an interesting word is in the middle row, and tap it. Its letters are subtracted from the source text you entered. The word you chose goes into the bottom (result) field. You are on your way (maybe!) to an anagram.

    The wheel is updated to contain only words that fit into the remaining text in the top field. The “Back” button is now activated.

    For example, suppose you scrolled to and tapped “agar”. Your screen will now look like this.



  4. Repeat the procedure to continue fitting words into the remaining source text. If you find a complete anagram, the source field will be empty, and the words in the result field will be red.

    For example, if you scrolled to and tapped “Mans”, your screen will look like this.



    Congratulations, you have a complete anagram of the word “anagrams”. However, it is not very exciting.

  5. If you like your anagram, you can save it by copying the result and pasting it into any other iPhone app. (For example, Notes.) Double-tapping the result will bring up the iPhone copy tools. (Keeping a list of your favorites will be a feature Real Soon Now.)




  6. At any point you can tap the “Back” button, which will undo your most recent step. It is this feature that makes the mobile app fully interactive. There are many anagram programs that spew out long lists of full anagrams. Most are unusable. This app lets you decide what words might be interesting or amusing.

See Also

Here are some other Web pages I have created.