Hidden inside basil sit bails and basil, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 7 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 39 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
bails and basil tie for the highest Scrabble score from basil at 7 points. The top 10 of 39 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 five-letter words hiding in basil: one comes from rearranging its letters, and basil itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bails. For points, the strongest plays are bails and basil — each worth 7 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in basil produces 12 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bail, labs, and sail. For points, the strongest plays are albs, bail, bals, bias, isba, labs, libs, and slab — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling basil turns up 15 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with lab. For points, the strongest plays are abs, alb, bal, bas, bis, lab, lib, sab, and sib — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 10 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in basil. If a familiar word is all you need, start with as and is. For points, the strongest plays are ab, ba, and bi — each worth 4 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 basil and you get a different five-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 4 of the 5 letters, not all of them.
basil 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 three senses for basil. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 7 points on a Scrabble board:
basil is one of two five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing basil unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are bails and basil, worth 7 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from basil 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 basil produce 39 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 five-letter words, 12 four-letter words, 15 three-letter words and 10 two-letter words.