Hidden inside costly sit costly and octyls, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 41 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
costly and octyls tie for the highest Scrabble score from costly at 11 points. The top 10 of 41 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 six-letter words hiding in costly: one comes from rearranging its letters, and costly itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these six-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are costly and octyls, each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 4 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in costly. No common everyday answer stands out among these five-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are cloys and octyl, each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in costly produces 16 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with cost, lost, lots, slot, and toys. For points, the strongest plays are cloy, coly, cosy, coys, and cyst — each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling costly turns up 13 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with lot, soy, and toy. For points, the strongest play is coy — worth 8 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
There are 6 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in costly. If a familiar word is all you need, start with oy, so, to, and yo. For points, the strongest plays are oy and yo — each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
1 seven-letter word can be made using all the letters in costly plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in costly 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.
costly 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 costly. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
costly is one of two six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing costly unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are costly and octyls, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from costly 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 costly produce 41 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 six-letter words, 4 five-letter words, 16 four-letter words, 13 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.