Hidden inside alliances sit alliances and canailles, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 241 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
alliances and canailles tie for the highest Scrabble score from alliances at 11 points. The top 10 of 241 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in alliances: one comes from rearranging its letters, and alliances itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these nine-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are alliances and canailles, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 6 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in alliances. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are alliance, ancillae, ancillas and 3 more, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in alliances produces 8 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are ancilla, anlaces, callans and 4 more, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling alliances turns up 31 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aliens and cleans. For points, 18 words tie at 8 points, including cleans, aecial and anlace.
There are 62 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in alliances. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aisle, alien and calls. For points, 31 words tie at 7 points, including calls, cells and clean.
Rearranging the letters in alliances produces 73 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with call, cans and case. For points, 25 words tie at 6 points, including call, cans and case.
Unscrambling alliances turns up 43 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with all, can and ice. For points, 10 words tie at 5 points, including can, ice and ace.
There are 16 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in alliances. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, as, in, and is. For points, 16 words tie at 2 points, including an, as and in.
3 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in alliances plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in alliances and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
alliances is in the NWL, the official Scrabble word list for North America, and in the Words With Friends dictionary, so it's playable exactly as it stands and needs no unscrambling.
The 4-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record five senses for alliances. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
alliances is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing alliances unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are alliances and canailles, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from alliances earns more points in Scrabble. Words With Friends prices the same letters differently, so the top of the list changes on a Words With Friends board. Both scores count tile values only and exclude premium squares.
The letters in alliances produce 241 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 6 eight-letter words, 8 seven-letter words, 31 six-letter words, 62 five-letter words, 73 four-letter words, 43 three-letter words and 16 two-letter words.