What set of letters has the most one-word anagrams?
One problem in answering this question is that there is no one authority as to what constitutes a legitimate word. Ross Eckler’s Making the Alphabet Dance lists 24 anagrams of the letters ‘aest’, but many of these are quite obscure and they are drawn from a wide range of sources. Merriam-Webster’s unabridged dictionary contains entries for these 14 words: • anestri, asterin, eranist, nastier, ratines, resiant, restain, retains, retinas, retsina, sainter, stainer, starnie, stearin Other wordplay sources omit some of these words and/or add others, including the multi-word anagrams ‘tin ears’ and ‘in tears’. Word Ways has for some years been collecting anagrams of ‘aeginrst’. William Tunstall-Pedoe indicates that a whopping 157 of these have some justification.
