# What word contains all 26 letters?

Source: https://silverapuzzles.com/riddles/what-word-contains-all-26-letters

A riddle about an impossible-sounding word. No English word uses every letter, so the question must mean “contains” in another way.

**Answer:** Alphabet.

“The alphabet” contains all 26 letters.

Hint: Count the letters differently.

## How to think about it

1. A word with all 26 letters would be at least 26 letters long and would be a pangram, which no ordinary word is.
2. Think of “contains” as “refers to” or “is made up of” in a looser sense.
3. Which single word stands for the whole set of letters from A to Z?
4. The alphabet contains all 26 letters.

## Why “Alphabet” is the answer

The word “alphabet” names the complete set of 26 letters, so the alphabet contains all of them even though the word itself uses only eight. The riddle plays on two senses of “contains”: letters inside a word versus members of a set. Spelling out the alphabet is literally listing everything it contains.

## Common wrong answers

- **Pangram.** A pangram is a sentence with every letter, not a word, and the word “pangram” has only seven letters.
- **Dictionary.** A dictionary contains every letter somewhere in its pages, but the riddle wants the word whose meaning is the full set.