Hidden inside darkens sit darkens and snarked, seven-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 158 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
Unscramble NDRESKA, NARDEKS or KDNASER and you get the same 7 letters as DARKENS: so the words from DARKENS listed below are the words from those scrambles too.
darkens and snarked tie for the highest Scrabble score from darkens at 12 points. The top 10 of 158 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 seven-letter words hiding in darkens: one comes from rearranging its letters, and darkens itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are darkens and snarked, each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling darkens turns up 11 six-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are danker, darken, drakes and 4 more, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 41 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in darkens. If a familiar word is all you need, start with asked, dares and dears. For points, 8 words tie at 10 points, including asked, drank and naked.
Rearranging the letters in darkens produces 54 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with dare, dark and dear. For points, 6 words tie at 9 points, including dark, desk and daks.
Unscrambling darkens turns up 35 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, and and are. For points, the strongest play is dak — worth 8 points in Scrabble.
There are 15 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in darkens. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, an, and as. For points, the strongest play is ka — worth 6 points in Scrabble.
3 eight-letter words can be made using all the letters in darkens plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in darkens and you get a different seven-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 6 of the 7 letters, not all of them.
darkens 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 three senses for darkens. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
darkens is one of two seven-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing darkens unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are darkens and snarked, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from darkens 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 darkens produce 158 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 seven-letter words, 11 six-letter words, 41 five-letter words, 54 four-letter words, 35 three-letter words and 15 two-letter words.