I'd recommend starting with easy ones: 4 or even 3 letters. Start with ear; then maybe tear. I like to try to work the newspaper Jumble puzzles in my head. I force myself to see all the circled letters in my mind--though eight is about my limit. Then I look at how the answer is broken down: is it five and three, four and four, etc., and then think of common words that fit one of them, and "see" if the rest make another word. If that fails I look at the cartoon. If that fails I usually quit fooling with it--I do it as a mental exercize, not to solve it by writing them down.