Hidden inside desperate sit departees and desperate, nine-letter plays tied at the top of this rack with 12 points in Scrabble apiece. In all, 393 valid words come out of this rack, grouped by length below and checked for Words With Friends as well as Scrabble.
departees and desperate tie for the highest Scrabble score from desperate at 12 points. The top 10 of 393 words are shown here, with the full list organized by length below.
There are 2 nine-letter words hiding in desperate: one comes from rearranging its letters, and desperate itself is already a playable word with no unscrambling required. If a familiar word is all you need, start with desperate. For points, the strongest plays are departees and desperate — each worth 12 points in Scrabble.
There are 10 eight-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in desperate. If a familiar word is all you need, start with repeated. For points, 9 words tie at 11 points, including repeated, departee and epatered.
Rearranging the letters in desperate produces 24 valid seven-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with dearest, deepest, repeats, and steered. For points, 13 words tie at 10 points, including deepest, adepter and departs.
Unscrambling desperate turns up 61 six-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with deeper, desert and easter. For points, 20 words tie at 9 points, including deeper, spared and spread.
There are 116 five-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in desperate. If a familiar word is all you need, start with dares, dates and dears. For points, 14 words tie at 8 points, including speed, taped and adept.
Rearranging the letters in desperate produces 105 valid four-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with apes, arts and dare. For points, 9 words tie at 7 points, including deep, pads and peed.
Unscrambling desperate turns up 59 three-letter words. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ads, ape and are. For points, the strongest plays are dap, dep, pad, and ped — each worth 6 points in Scrabble.
There are 16 two-letter words that can be made by unscrambling the letters in desperate. If a familiar word is all you need, start with ad, as, and at. For points, the strongest plays are pa and pe — each worth 4 points in Scrabble.
3 ten-letter words can be made using all the letters in desperate plus one additional letter.
Swap a single tile in desperate and you get a different nine-letter rack with its own word list. None of these appear in the results above — they share 8 of the 9 letters, not all of them.
desperate 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 desperate. Scrabble and Words With Friends score tiles and not meanings, so every sense below is worth the same 12 points on a Scrabble board:
desperate is one of two nine-letter words the same letters produce. No arrangement of the same tiles scores higher in Scrabble, so playing desperate unchanged also takes the maximum points these letters offer.
The highest-scoring plays from these letters are departees and desperate, worth 12 points in Scrabble, and nothing else built from desperate 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 desperate produce 393 valid words in the Scrabble and Words With Friends dictionaries. The word count by length is: 2 nine-letter words, 10 eight-letter words, 24 seven-letter words, 61 six-letter words, 116 five-letter words, 105 four-letter words, 59 three-letter words and 16 two-letter words.