Hidden inside delay sit delay, layed, and leady, five-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 9 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 36 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
delay, layed, and leady tie for the highest Scrabble score from delay at 9 points. The top 10 of 36 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 3 five-letter words hiding in delay: two come from rearranging its letters, and delay itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with delay. For points, the strongest plays are delay, layed, and leady — 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 delay produces 7 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deal, lady, and lead. For points, the strongest plays are lady, yald, and yeld — 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 delay turns up 15 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with aye, day, dye, lad, lay, and led. For points, the strongest plays are day, dey, and dye — 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 11 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in delay. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad and ay. For points, the strongest plays are ay, ya, and ye — 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 delay 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.
delay 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 delay carries the same value on a Scrabble board and on a Words With Friends board.
Dictionaries record six senses for delay. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 9 points on a Scrabble board:
delay is one of three five-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing delay unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are delay, layed, and leady, worth 9 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from delay 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 delay produce 36 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 3 five-letter words, 7 four-letter words, 15 three-letter words and 11 two-letter words.