When provided with the unscrambled solution to anagrams do people underestimate the difficulty of solving the anagrams by themselves?

Answer 1

Yes, because they can see (for short anagrams at least) how the letters have been rearranged. Seeing many solutions does improve the ability of average individuals to recognize similar anagrams, but not as greatly as actually working out a solution.

As with other puzzles where the solution is already known to the puzzle creator, there is no intrinsic value to solving anagrams. The focus of many anagrammers is to show how language has created words using the same letters that have some apt connection, as in the anagrams silent and listen.