Hidden inside bear sit bare, bear, and brae, four-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 6 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 18 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
bare, bear, and brae tie for the highest Scrabble score from bear at 6 points. The top 10 of 18 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 four-letter words hiding in bear: two come from rearranging its letters, and bear itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bare and bear. For points, the strongest plays are bare, bear, and brae — 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 bear turns up 8 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with are, bar, bra, ear, and era. For points, the strongest plays are arb, bae, bar, bra, and reb — 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 7 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in bear. If a familiar word is all you need, start with be. For points, the strongest plays are ab, ba, and be — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
39 five-letter words can be made using all the letters in bear plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in bear and you get a different four-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 3 of the 4 letters, not all of them.
bear 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 1-point gap between the two totals comes from the tile values themselves: Scrabble and Words With Friends price the same letters differently.
Dictionaries record fifteen senses for bear. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 6 points on a Scrabble board:
bear is one of three four-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing bear unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are bare, bear, and brae, worth 6 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from bear 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 bear produce 18 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 four-letter words, 8 three-letter words and 7 two-letter words.