Monday, 5 October 2015

pattern - What is an Anagrammable Word™?


This is in the spirit of the What is a Word/Phrase™ series started by JLee with a special brand of Phrase™ and Word™ puzzles.



If a word conforms to a special rule, I call it an Anagrammable Word™.


Use the following examples below to find the rule.


ANAGRAMMABLE word list


And, if you want to analyze, here is a CSV version:



ANAGRAMMABLE Words™,Not ANAGRAMMABLE Words™
ALARM,PANIC
ANIMAL,ALIEN
BLESSING,KINDNESS
BLOOD,PLASMA

EGGS,HAM
HATTER,HAIR-STYLIST
HEART,TICKER
FRACTION,TRACTION
ONE-OUT,TWO-IN-ONE
SAMPLING,SAPLING
VERB,VERBAL



Notes:




  1. It is preferable to include explanation for each Anagrammable Word™, but not necessarily for non-Anagrammable Words™ .

  2. Font/case doesn't matter.



Answer



An Anagrammable Word™ is a word that ...



... can be combined with one of the typical anagram indicators (or anagrind) for cryptic crossword clues to form a common phrase or expression:

false alarm
wild animal
mixed blessing

bad blood ✻
scrambled eggs
Mad Hatter
broken heart ✻
mixed fraction ✻
odd one out
random sampling ✻
irregular verb ✻

(I had other, less satisfying alternatives for the ones marked with ✻. The OP has shared the intended answers in the comments, so I've updated them.)



Note:




An Anagrammable Word™ is not required to be a suitable anagram fodder that yields other words. For example, EGGS does not anagram to anything useful. So the quality of being Anagrammable™ does not rely on being an anagram of something, only on forming fixed expressions with anagram indicators.

(There are two questions on PSE that use anagrams to define two of the expressions here: mixed blessing and scrambled eggs, but in my opinion neither is very good, because the resulting anagrams are not really words. Plus, these clues lack definitions.)



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