All mixed up

Mixing up letters of words or phrases can create other words or phrases, and these are known as anagrams (the rule is that you must use exactly the same letters, with none left over and none added).

Some simple one-word anagrams include:

parental > paternal, orchestra > carthorse, deductions > discounted

Here's a really good example of a long anagram - created by Cory Calhoun:

"To be or not to be: that is the question; whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune..."

becomes  "In one of the Bard's best-thought-of tragedies our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten."

This is a particularly clever anagram... the quote from Hamlet is turned into an anagram that summarises Shakespeare's play.