Can you unscramble words?

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I was doing some Mensa problems and I noticed that I could do all of them without too much trouble except for the ones that involved unscrambling words. So that got me curious about what brain pathways or regions are involved in the process of unscrambling words. I tried to look it up online but did not come up with much information.

Does anyone have any clue as to how the brain does this?

Do you find it difficult to unscramble words?

Here are two lists of words to try unscrambling. I divided into hard and easy. I put the answers at the bottom. What are your results?

Easy:

BTLEA
ONTPI
AKCHL
CHAEP
YHPAP
FIAHT
EIGDU
UQETI
LEIMS
SAPEK

Hard:

GRVWENSI
ORNETM
ATAONS
RIMOHES
MAADILR
CLRAETN

Answers:
Easy - table, point, chalk, cheap, happy, faith, guide, quiet, smile, speak
Hard - swerving, mentor, sonata, heroism, admiral, central

Here's my results after trying about ~30 seconds on each.

TABLE
POINT
CHALK
PEACH
???
FAITH
GUIDE
QUIET
???
SPEAK

???
???
SONATA
???
???
???

One strategy I used is to look for pairs of letters that are often together, especially when there aren't "enough: vowels. For example, I knew that "CH" would probably be together since CHALK had only own vowel. But eh.. I suck at these things. I should re-up my subscription to GAMES magazine and get some practice.

Note: Due to some influences I am not at 100% cognitive copacity >_<

I went through the easy ones pretty quickly. On the hard ones, I got lazy and I quit after the first one. They were pretty hard though. Was there a time limit?

Easy: table, point, chalk, peach, happy, faith, guide, quiet, smile and speak

Hard: swerving, mentor, sonata, heroism, admiral, ???

I like doing word puzzles of all kinds.

One of my favorite words

aaaacegiMmnllo


Go down for answer


Try it before you look at the answer


Don't scroll down until you give up


Answer is below


Answer is almost here


ANSWER:

Megolamaniacal

CLRAETN-Central. That was the hardest one for me to figure out.

I keep looking for more than 1 answer...

Easy:

BTLEA - table
ONTPI - point
AKCHL - chalk
CHAEP - cheap
YHPAP - happy
FIAHT - faith
EIGDU - guide
UQETI - quiet
LEIMS - slime
SAPEK - speak

Hard:

GRVWENSI - ???
ORNETM - mentor
ATAONS - ???
RIMOHES - ???
MAADILR - ???
CLRAETN - ???

gosh i'm not very good at these haha.

That's too complicated for Sids. :O)

Easy:

BTLEA - table
ONTPI - point
AKCHL - chalk
CHAEP - peach, cheap
YHPAP - happy
FIAHT - faith
EIGDU - guide
UQETI - quite, quiet
LEIMS - limes, slime, miles
SAPEK - peaks

Hard:

GRVWENSI - i couldnt guess to save my life
ORNETM - mentor
ATAONS - sonata
RIMOHES - no idea
MAADILR - this probably isnt even a word
CLRAETN - central

close =_=

I can do 7-letter words in about two seconds... on good days. I always look at those Scrabble puzzles in the newspaper. But another thing I've always done, since I learned to read, was deconstruct words and try to find 'words within words'. I'd spend hours doing this when I was bored in class. So I think it's something you need to train your brain to do.

We played a word-unscrambling game at my friend's baby shower. I was done ages before everyone else. Some of the two-word ones took me a bit longer though.