Hidden inside barrenest sit banterers and barrenest, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 369 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
banterers and barrenest tie for the highest Scrabble score from barrenest at 11 points. The top 10 of 369 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in barrenest: one comes from rearranging its letters, and barrenest 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 banterers and barrenest, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 4 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in barrenest. No common everyday answer stands out among these eight-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are absenter, banterer, and rebaters, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in barrenest produces 24 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with eastern and nearest. For points, 9 words tie at 9 points, including banters, barrens and barrets.
Unscrambling barrenest turns up 66 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with arrest, barest and beaten. For points, 20 words tie at 8 points, including barest, beaten and breast.
There are 94 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in barrenest. If a familiar word is all you need, start with barer, barns and beans. For points, 33 words tie at 7 points, including barer, barns and beans.
Rearranging the letters in barrenest produces 102 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ants, arts and bans. For points, 38 words tie at 6 points, including bans, bare and barn.
Unscrambling barrenest turns up 60 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ant, are and art. For points, 18 words tie at 5 points, including ban, bar and bat.
There are 17 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in barrenest. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, as, at, and be. For points, the strongest plays are ab, ba, and be — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
1 ten-letter word can be made using all the letters in barrenest plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in barrenest 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.
barrenest 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.
barrenest is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing barrenest unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are banterers and barrenest, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from barrenest 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 barrenest produce 369 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 4 eight-letter words, 24 seven-letter words, 66 six-letter words, 94 five-letter words, 102 four-letter words, 60 three-letter words and 17 two-letter words.