Hidden inside beasts sit basest, basset, bastes and 1 other, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 8 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 83 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble BESSTA, STEABS or EBSSTA and you get the same 6 letters as BEASTS: so the words from BEASTS listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
basest, basset, bastes and 6 others tie for the highest Scrabble score from beasts at 8 points. The top 10 of 83 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 4 six-letter words hiding in beasts: three come from rearranging its letters, and beasts itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with beasts. For points, the strongest plays are basest, basset, bastes, and beasts — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 18 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in beasts. If a familiar word is all you need, start with bases, beast and beats. For points, 12 words tie at 7 points, including bases, beast and beats.
Rearranging the letters in beasts produces 28 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with base, bass and bats. For points, 15 words tie at 6 points, including base, bass and bats.
Unscrambling beasts turns up 23 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ass, ate and bat. For points, 8 words tie at 5 points, including bat, bet and tab.
There are 10 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in beasts. If a familiar word is all you need, start with as, at, and be. For points, the strongest plays are ab, ba, and be — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
Swap a single tile in beasts and you get a different six-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 5 of the 6 letters, not all of them.
beasts 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 two senses for beasts. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 8 points on a Scrabble board:
beasts is one of four six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing beasts unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are basest, basset, bastes, and beasts, worth 8 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from beasts 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 beasts produce 83 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 4 six-letter words, 18 five-letter words, 28 four-letter words, 23 three-letter words and 10 two-letter words.