Hidden inside constrain sit constrain and transonic, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 423 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
constrain and transonic tie for the highest Scrabble score from constrain at 11 points. The top 10 of 423 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in constrain: one comes from rearranging its letters, and constrain 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 constrain and transonic, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
There are 8 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in constrain. If a familiar word is all you need, start with contains. For points, 8 words tie at 10 points, including contains, actinons and canonist.
Rearranging the letters in constrain produces 27 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with actions, cartons, contain, and nations. For points, 19 words tie at 9 points, including actions, cartons and contain.
Unscrambling constrain turns up 68 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with action, actors and cannot. For points, 43 words tie at 8 points, including action, actors and cannot.
There are 114 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in constrain. If a familiar word is all you need, start with actor, carts and coast. For points, 54 words tie at 7 points, including actor, carts and coast.
Rearranging the letters in constrain produces 120 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with acts, airs and ants. For points, 44 words tie at 6 points, including acts, cans and cars.
Unscrambling constrain turns up 65 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with act, air and ant. For points, 17 words tie at 5 points, including act, can and car.
There are 19 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in constrain. If a familiar word is all you need, start with an, as and at. For points, 19 words tie at 2 points, including an, as and at.
6 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in constrain plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in constrain 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.
constrain 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 3-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 constrain. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
constrain is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing constrain unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are constrain and transonic, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from constrain 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 constrain produce 423 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 8 eight-letter words, 27 seven-letter words, 68 six-letter words, 114 five-letter words, 120 four-letter words, 65 three-letter words and 19 two-letter words.