Jumble is a word puzzle with a clue, a drawing illustrating the clue, and a set of words, each of which is “jumbled” by permuting its letters to make an anagram. A solver reconstructs the words, then arranges letters at marked positions in the words to spell the answer to the clue. The clue and illustration are often designed to mislead the solver.
Jumble was created in 1954 by Martin Naydel, who is better known for his work on comic books. Jumble is one of the most valuable properties of Tribune Media Services, which holds the rights to the JUMBLE trademark. Daily and Sunday Jumble puzzles appear in hundreds of newspapers.
Jumble puzzles found in newspapers often have four base anagrams, two of five letters and two of six. One method of solving Jumbles is to solve all but one of the anagrams, then use the marked letters to infer the final phrase. This determines the missing marked letters, which may help solve the last base anagram.
In other mediaVarious electronic versions of Jumble have been released, including a version by Hasbro Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The game features 5 modes of play ranging from classic Jumble to crossword puzzles to an easier Jumble mode for kids.
TextTwist, a Java game by GameHouse, is similar to Jumble. Players form words from a set of six scrambled letters, and must find at least one 6-letter word using all the letters to get to the next round. Additional points are granted for words using at least three letters.
A TV game show based on Jumble aired in 1994. It was hosted by game show veteran Wink Martindale, and aired on The Family Channel (now called ABC Family).
In the Seinfeld episode “The Pez Dispenser,” Kramer, upon hearing that George Costanza was doing crossword puzzles with his girlfriend, said he “likes to do the Jumble.”
In the Strong Bad email from Homestar Runner entitled "Caper," Strong Bad and The Cheat break into Homestar's house to steal the Jumbles from his newspapers. Strong Bad refers to this in song as "The Jumble Caper."
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