Hidden inside defer sit defer, freed, and refed, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 27 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
defer, freed, and refed tie for the highest Scrabble score from defer at 9 points. The top 10 of 27 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 five-letter words hiding in defer: two come from rearranging its letters, and defer itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. No common everyday answer stands out among these five-letter results, so let the score decide: the highest-scoring words are defer, freed, and refed, each worth 9 points in Scrabble.
The full list follows, sorted A to Z; every score reflects tile constraints and skips board bonuses.
Rearranging the letters in defer produces 9 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deer, feed, and free. For points, the strongest play is feed — 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 defer turns up 9 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with fed, fee, and red. 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 defer. 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 defer and you get a different five-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 4 of the 5 letters, not all of them.
defer 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.
Both totals match, because every tile in defer carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record two senses for defer. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
defer is one of three five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing defer unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are defer, freed, and refed, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from defer 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 defer produce 27 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 five-letter words, 9 four-letter words, 9 three-letter words and 6 two-letter words.