Hidden inside critters sit critters, restrict, and stricter, eight-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 10 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 120 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
critters, restrict, and stricter tie for the highest Scrabble score from critters at 10 points. The top 10 of 120 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 eight-letter words hiding in critters: two come from rearranging its letters, and critters itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with stricter. For points, the strongest plays are critters, restrict, and stricter — each worth 10 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in critters produces 4 valid seven-letter words. No common everyday answer stands out among these seven-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are critter and trisect, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
Unscrambling critters turns up 16 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with sitter and strict. For points, 7 words tie at 8 points, including strict, citers and criers.
There are 27 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in critters. If a familiar word is all you need, start with cries, rices, tires, and tries. For points, 15 words tie at 7 points, including cries, rices and certs.
Rearranging the letters in critters produces 35 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ices, rest and rice. For points, 14 words tie at 6 points, including ices, rice and cert.
Unscrambling critters turns up 26 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ice, its and set. For points, 7 words tie at 5 points, including ice, cis and rec.
5 nine-letter words can be made using all the letters in critters plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in critters and you get a different eight-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 7 of the 8 letters, not all of them.
critters 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 one sense for critters. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 10 points on a Scrabble board:
critters is one of three eight-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing critters unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are critters, restrict, and stricter, worth 10 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from critters 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 critters produce 120 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 eight-letter words, 4 seven-letter words, 16 six-letter words, 27 five-letter words, 35 four-letter words, 26 three-letter words and 9 two-letter words.