Jumble

Jumbleis aword puzzlewith a clue, a drawing illustrating the clue, and a set of words, each of which is “jumbled” by scrambling its letters. A solver reconstructs the words, and then arranges letters at marked positions in the words to spell the answer phrase to the clue.  The clue, and sometimes the illustration, provide hints about the answer phrase, which frequently uses ahomophoneorpun.
Jumble was created in 1954 by Martin Naydel, who was better known for his work on comic books.It originally appeared under the title "Scramble."Henri Arnold and Bob Lee took over the feature in 1962 and continued it for at least 30 years.As of 2013, Jumble was being maintained byDavid L. HoytandJeff Knurek.Jumble is one of the most valuable properties of its distributor, US companyTribune Content Agency,which owns the JUMBLE trademarks and copyrights. Daily and Sunday Jumble puzzles appear in over 600 newspapers in the United States and internationally.
The current syndicated version found in most dailynewspapers(under the official titleJumble--That Scrambled Word Game) has four base anagrams, two of five letters and two of six, followed by a clue and a series of blank spaces into which the answer to the clue fits. The answer to the clue is generally apunof some sort. A weekly "kids version" of the puzzle features a three-letter word plus three four-letter words. In order to find the letters that are in the answer to the given clue, the player must unscramble all four of the scrambled words; the letters that are in the clue will be circled. The contestant then unscrambles the circled letters to form the answer to the clue. An alternate workaround is to solve some of the scrambled words, figure out the answer to the clue without all the letters, then use the "extra" letters as aids to solve the remaining scrambled words.
There are many variations of puzzles from the Jumble brand including Jumble, Jumble for Kids, Jumble Crosswords, TV Jumble, Jumble BrainBusters, Jumble BrainBusters Junior, Hollywood Jumble, Jumble Jong, Jumble Word Vault, Jumpin' Jumble, Jumble Solitaire, and Jumble Word Web.
In addition to being playable online through various interactive online platforms such as onTribune Content Agency's Web site in anHTML 5implementation,Jumble is downloadable through several mobile game applications such as Apple's iTunes, AT&T and on the Amazon Kindle.
In 2010, Jumble Madness	was developed by Anino Entertainment and published by Destineer for theNintendo DS.
As of 2012, Jumble books were published by Andrews McMeel Publishing,Triumph Books,and Tyndale House Publishers.
Jumble is also available as a Bicycle playing card by United States Playing Card Company with an assortment of game titles such as "3-4-5," "Jumble Word Meld," and "Jumble Solitaire."
A TV show based on Jumble aired in 1994. It was hosted by game show veteranWink Martindale, and aired on The Family Channel (now calledFreeform).
Algorithms have been designed to solve Jumbles, using a dictionary. Common algorithms work by printing all words that can be formed from a set of letters. The solver then chooses the right word. A dictionary of such anagrams may be used to solve puzzles or verify that a jumbled word is unique when creating puzzles.
First algorithm:
Second algorithm:
Algorithm to find thepermutationsof J:
Douglas Hofstadterdeveloped a program calledJumbothat tries to solve Jumble problems as a human mind would.
The program does not rely on a dictionary and does not try to find real English words, but rather words that could be English, exploiting a database of plausibilities for various combinations of letters.
Letters are combined non-deterministically, following a strategy inspired by chemical reactions and free associations.