Hidden inside defend sit defend and fended, six-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 11 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 22 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
defend and fended tie for the highest Scrabble score from defend at 11 points. The top 10 of 22 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 six-letter words hiding in defend: one comes from rearranging its letters, and defend itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with defend. For points, the strongest plays are defend and fended — each worth 11 points in Scrabble.
The words below are listed alphabetically. Scores count playable tiles only and leave out premium-square bonuses.
Unscrambling defend produces exactly one five-letter word: ended. It is an everyday word and an easy play, worth 7 points in Scrabble.
Rearranging the letters in defend produces 5 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deed, feed, and need. For points, the strongest plays are feed and fend — each worth 8 points in Scrabble.
Below, the list runs in alphabetical order, with each score based on the playable tile set — premium squares not included.
Unscrambling defend turns up 8 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with end, fed, and fee. For points, the strongest plays are def and fed — each worth 7 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 defend. No common everyday answer stands out among these two-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are ef and fe, each worth 5 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Swap a single tile in defend 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.
defend 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 seven senses for defend. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 11 points on a Scrabble board:
defend is one of two six-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing defend unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are defend and fended, worth 11 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from defend 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 defend produce 22 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 six-letter words, 1 five-letter word, 5 four-letter words, 8 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.