Hidden inside backwards sit backwards and drawbacks, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 21 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 144 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
backwards and drawbacks tie for the highest Scrabble score from backwards at 21 points. The top 10 of 144 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in backwards: one comes from rearranging its letters, and backwards itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with backwards. For points, the strongest plays are backwards and drawbacks — each worth 21 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 2 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in backwards. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are backward and drawback, each worth 20 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Unscrambling backwards produces exactly one seven-letter word: backsaw. It is not one of the common answers — a genuine unscrambler find — and it banks 18 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling backwards turns up 6 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with awards. For points, the strongest play is wracks — worth 15 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 31 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in backwards. If a familiar word is all you need, start with award, backs, barks, cards, crabs, draws, and racks. For points, the strongest plays are bawks, wacks, and wrack — each worth 14 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in backwards produces 55 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with back, bark, bars, bras, cabs, card, and cars. For points, the strongest plays are bawk and wack — each worth 13 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling backwards turns up 38 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, ask, bad, bar, bra, cab, and car. For points, the strongest plays are ack and kab — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 9 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in backwards. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, as, and aw. For points, the strongest play is ka — worth 6 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Swap a single tile in backwards 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.
backwards 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 2-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record two senses for backwards. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 21 points on a Scrabble board:
backwards is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing backwards unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are backwards and drawbacks, worth 21 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from backwards 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 backwards produce 144 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 2 eight-letter words, 1 seven-letter word, 6 six-letter words, 31 five-letter words, 55 four-letter words, 38 three-letter words and 9 two-letter words.